


Deep down under, you're a boy of cosmic wonder

by louispains



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, and louis is just really fucked up, and probably needs saving, harry doesn't know what he's getting himself into, harry is the good-natured little angel baby that he is, liam is liam, niall does not, zayn has a thing for personal space
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2017-12-09 02:17:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louispains/pseuds/louispains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is (figuratively) shipped off to boarding school because his parents just got a divorce and shit is complicated. Having Niall as a roommate can either end one of two ways (spoiler: it's good). And Louis is intriguing before Harry has even met him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Welcome to Parrish

**Author's Note:**

> I made a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first instalment of aforementioned thing. Let me know if it sucks and I'll just quit life before I embarrass myself further :))) find me on tumblr at louitsomlinsons

"Harry, there's something your Mother and I need to speak to you about."

Harry pauses briefly and glances up from where he had been noncommittally mashing a potato with the back of his fork. His father is sat at the head of the table, cutlery abandoned on his plate and his hands clasped tightly together, his knuckles white.

This must be important.

Anything that's worth interrupting dinner for is acknowledgeable at best, and the look on his father's face means that this  _something_ is pretty serious.

Harry grunts and resumes his manual food processing.

"For the record, Dad, you already told me you were getting a divorce, like, a week ago." 

There's a kick at his shin immediately following his smart-arse remark that's hard enough to make the entire table shake. A few peas roll off his plate and he glares up at Gemma-- she's giving him  _the look._

"Yes, I uh- I did indeed." His father continues, his eyes are cast down to the table. "Your mother and I are getting a divorce. And. Well." God he's struggling for words, this is painful in so many ways.

The next part comes out all at once, half of his words strung together and spat out fast. Probably before he chickens out and changes his mind, Harry thinks. "We know it's goingtobehard on both youandyoursister to takeallofthisinand still be able to get on with your daily lives."

Harry rolls his eyes and glares at the chicken on his plate like it's offended him. He hears his father draw in a breath from somewhere to his left, steadying himself. When he speaks again his voice is softer, somehow. Calmer.

"As you know, Gemma is going off to college at the end of the holidays, which means that you will essentially be an only child for the next few years."

The rest comes out in a jumble of syllables and sounds that pour erratically from his father's mouth over and over with no distinguishable words or sentences at all. Harry manages to catch the words  _hard_ and _bestforyou_ and  _toughdecision_ before  _we'resendingyoutoboardingschool-_  and his cutlery slips between his fingers. 

He nearly gives himself whiplash from the speed in which he spins to face his father.

"You're sending me  _where?!_ " The sound of metal cutlery clanging against the table accentuates his point quite nicely, he thinks.

"To Parrish School for Boys, Harry." His father sighs with a furrowed brow, unable to make eye contact with him.

"As in, the Parrish School for Boys  _boarding school_ Parrish School for Boys?" _  
_

"Yes, that's correct."

"In  _London?"_

"That's right, Harold."

"Don't call me that!" The expression on his father's face is making it near impossible for harry to  _not_ raise his voice. He can't even make eye contact with him. What a fucking coward. 

He sighs as he speaks, one of Harry's pet-hates that his father always does when he can't be bothered talking to you anymore. "It's your name, is it not?"

"Oh this  _has_  to be some kind of joke-"

"Watch your tone please, young man." His mother finally speaks up from the other end of the table, and Harry whips around to gape at her.

"You're in on this too, mum? You're just going to send me away when things get a bit tough?"

"That's not what this is about, Harry." She sighs and her shoulders droop visibly. She looks so tired, the skin under her eyes darkened with lack of sleep. Or maybe something else.

"Your Father and I aren't going to be living together anymore, and it wouldn't be fair to make you choose one of us to stay with, or to make you keep switching between us all the time. It would just be too difficult, H. For everyone."

Her voice is small as she offers her hand to him, but it hangs in the air. Cold and untouched, Harry glares at it like it's poison. 

"We just want what's best for you, Harry."

"But that's not what's best for me. What's best is staying here, where all my friends are, instead of being a thousand miles away with strange boys that I've never even met before!"

"It's barely a 3 hour drive to London, Harry, it's not even 300 kilometres away. Stop overreacting." His father equips from his end of the table and Harry can't even bring himself to look at him, but he can tell that he's pressing his temples just by the tone in his voice.

"So what!" He shoots back defensively. "You've still never even _been_ to the place, you have no idea what it's like there! Or what the kids are like, who knows how they could influence me?"

"Harry don't be difficult."

"I'm not! I could get an earring, or start smoking weed, I might even get a tattoo, who knows? Not you. Either of you. Because you have never. Been. There."

There's a moment of tense silence as he and his father stare at each other. Harry's panting, out of breath from his little spiel and his father swallows thickly, his throat bobbing up and down visibly. The sight makes Harry's insides churn.

Suddenly the legs of his father's chair are scraping against the ground and he rises from the table.

"You're going to Parrish and that's final."

He picks up his plate and stalks away from the table as Harry sinks back into his chair, defeated.

He can feel his mother and sister staring at him, uncomfortable, unsure of what to do next. Little tantrums like this aren't uncommon in the Styles household, not when you've got a son like Harry. But this seems bigger, probably because it's about him being shipped off to fucking  _London_ and not some half-arsed argument about the volume of his music, or whatever.

It's his mother who finally breaks the silence, breathing in deep before she speaks. "Harry living without a father in your life can seriously-"

"You know that I'm already freaking  _gay_ , mum." Harry spits out as he pushes away from the table and out of the room. Who cares if he's being childish, this is bullshit.

His mother's long sigh is audible even from around the corner, as Harry makes his way up the stairs to his room two at a time, the backs of his eyes stinging.

-

"Remember, Harry, I'll only be a few hours away, okay?" Her fingers grip the steering wheel tightly and Harry stares out the window of the parked car to avoid her - what's supposed to be - sympathetic, side glance. "And I will always be there for you to talk to on the phone if you need help or just want to chat, or anything at all. So will your father, so just give one of us a call whenever you like."

"Of course, Mother dearest." Harry sighs sarcastically and absently watches a few boys climb out of the car in front of them.

"And Gemma said she's going to set up a skype account, so you can talk to her whenever you want, too, check out how she's going with uni and-"

Harry sighs frustratedly, cutting her off. "I know, mum, thanks."

He opens the door of the car and makes his way around to the boot before she has a chance to get upset about it. 

There's barely five seconds before his mum is at his side, pulling the duffle bag from the car and placing it on top of his suitcase before fixing him with a worried smile. She holds him by the shoulders, her eyes raking over his face, and uses her thumb to uncrease the tight line that he has set his eyebrows into reflexively.

"You know I love you, right? And I just want what's best for you."

Harry lets his shoulders relax for the first time since they left home over three hours ago. He sighs, nodding slowly as he offers his mum a small smile. 

"I know, mum."

"Promise me you'll be on your best behaviour here, and you won't, I don't know, get a tattoo or start smoking weed like you said."

Harry chuckles and slings the bag over his shoulder, rolling his eyes slightly in the process. "I'll endeavour to."

She frowns a little at that, but she's smiling, so Harry supposes that she thinks he was joking.

He's not entirely sure he was.

She gives him a long hug that makes them both sway on their feet and a quick kiss on the cheek before one more final goodbye with wet eyes, and then Harry is turning around and making his way towards the big iron gates of Parrish School for Boys.

As he strides away from the car, eyeing the other arriving boys curiously, he can't help but let a small smile creep across his lips.

Harry was shocked, to say the least, when it had been sprung upon him that he would not be returning to his school this year. The fact that his parents were sending him to a  _boarding school_  in  _London -_ more than three hours away from all of his friends and everything he grew up alongside - seemed absolutely unbelievable. Completely uncharacteristic of his clingy mother and over-protective father.

But the last two weeks had given Harry a chance to think about this whole boarding school business. And consequently, in the last two weeks, Harry had become a lot more open minded about it.

A  _hell_ of a lot more open minded.

He was  _three hours_ away from his parents, in the heart of London, with about 800 other boys around his age (at least  _some_  of them were bound to be fit). And sure, there's the fact that it _is_ just school - that he can never get away from, mind you - but how bad could it be?

But Harry would be dead before he told his parents as much, though. After the scene he made at dinner, he could never give them that satisfaction, then they might do something stupid. Like change their minds and send him back to his old school.

And that's the last thing Harry wants right now, come to think of it, because between all the drama surrounding his parents and the pressure of Gemma going off to uni, Harry wants nothing more than to get the hell away from Cheshire.

As he walks through the big iron gates embedded with the words  _Parrish School for Boys_ , he can't help but think of this as a fresh start. No matter how tragically cheesy it sounds, even in his head, that's what it is. Something new.

Something exciting.

Harry can be do anything he wants to do.

He can be anyone he wants to be.

-

After a quick stop at the reception desk to receive his room key, text books and uniforms, it doesn't take Harry long to locate the general vicinity of his room.

Number 721, located in the Warwick dorm in the east, on the third floor.

He hauls himself up the last step, suitcase, duffle bag and other items he's picked up along the way that he needs for one class or another all somehow hanging limply from one of his limbs.

He steps forward on shaky legs once, twice- and doesn't quite make it a third time. He collapses to the ground in a heap of tan trousers and navy blue blazers with the red school crest stitched onto the pocket.

Harry stares blankly at the ceiling, having already made it past the initial shock of the fall and obligatory string of curse words that escaped his mouth on the way down.

He just breathes for a second, inhaling the air all the way down to his toes.

It's probably from either lack of energy due to climbing three flights of stairs with luggage that probably weighs over half his body weight, or the fact that the vast majority of said luggage somehow all managed to land atop his body during the fall, but Harry finds himself completely unable to move.

It's probably both.

He remains motionless for a moment, blinking up at the ceiling above him, and contemplates falling asleep. He wonders if he would be labelled as the weird new kid if he spent the rest of the night just laying here under a pile of suitcases and books. Hmm.

Probably.

Damn people and their harsh judgement. 

"Hey buddy." A voice booms from just across the hall and then suddenly there's a boy standing over him. A boy with a ridiculous bleach job and a lopsided grin and he's wearing a singlet and jogging bottoms despite the fact that it's fucking  _freezing_  outside. 

"Um." Harry cranes his neck to look at him and it is drawn to his attention that he may or may not have cracked multiple ribs, courtesy of his suitcase.

The notably  _Irish_ boy hauls his suitcase from his torso and yanks him to his feet in one swift movement, Harry is momentarily winded.

"What's the craic?" 

Harry blinks.

"Excuse me."

It's not a question.

"The name's Niall." The boy grins as he shakes Harry's hand enthusiastically, and Harry wonders what his face looks like when it's  _not_ split in half by a massive grin.

"Harry." He offers with a weak smile and confused eyes because he's still a little shell-shocked from a) his fall, and b) this... this boisterous blonde bombshell (yay for alliteration).

"So where you headed, Harry?" Niall asks, which is pointless considering the fact that he yanks the piece of paper form Harry's hand not even a second after the question has left his mouth, and immediately scans the page for his room number.

"Room 721, I think?" Harry manages to squeak out with what little breath is left in his tortured lungs as he sways uneasily on the balls of his feet.

This seems to spark something inside the other boy, and he looks up with wide blue eyes and an even wider grin, his cheeks flushed red.

"Shit, how you doin' roomie!" He pulls Harry into his side, jostling his shoulder as he does so and,  _okay._

"We're right down here, just follow me." Niall grabs Harry by the hand and starts yanking him down the hallway, all quick steps and long strides that Harry struggles to match, even with his oddly long legs.

So this Niall kid is his roommate, okay. It's weird enough that the first person who talked to him in the whole school turned out to be the guy that he's going to be spending the majority of his life with from this point onward. But he figures that's probably saying something about his personality. Well, this could end in a number of ways.

People whizz past him in a blur of chuckles and manly one-armed hugs, several of which Niall is engaged in and Harry tries not to care that he doesn't get introduced to anyone. He'll get to know them all eventually. He wonders how many of these boys he will actually becomes friends with over the course of his time here.

They arrive outside a door that has the numbers 721 fastened into the wood above a little whiteboard that has Niall's name drawn on it graffiti-style in blue and green markers.

The boy stares at it for a moment, a contemplative frown on his face, before pulling the marker from its holder and yanking off the cap with his teeth. He quickly scribbles "+ Harry" underneath and gives him a cheeky grin anda raise of his eyebrows as he pushes the door open with one hand, the other still clutching Harry's tightly.

"So this is it." Niall pulls them inside and stops just inside the doorway, glancing about the place.

The two single beds pushed up against the far wall look about as inviting as he had expected them to (which isn't a lot) and one of them is already piled with half empty bags that are exploding with various pairs of supras and snapbacks. Niall has obviously already made himself quite at home. There's a window that goes from corner to corner about a metre above the bedheads, and the afternoon sun creeping in casts a long, criss-crossed shadow across the floor. There's a bedside table with a lamp and two drawers beside each bed, and a trunk at the foot. Two empty desks stand in each of the corners on the same wall as the door they just entered from. Everything is tragically symmetrical.

It's not that the furniture is old or dirty or falling apart or whatever, because it's not. It's probably the entire opposite. It's just that Harry likes his room to look, well...  _lived in._  

Nothing that a few band posters and some wall art can't fix, and a half-open door just off to the right promises a conjoining bathroom, so the place is already about ten times better than Harry had expected.

The one thing that stands out the most to Harry, and is probably the most interesting thing in the whole room, is a small couch sitting in the centre of the floor, not facing anything in particular, just sitting there. It's bright green and looks like it has been made to seat about two people maximum, but also looks as though it has seated a lot more than that in its lifetime. It's significantly older and less pristine than the rest of the furniture in here; it certainly doesn't look like something the staff would have put in the room.

Niall glances at him, catches him eyeing the couch.

"The couch was my treat." Niall elbows him in the side, grinning again. "We're not supposed to bring our own furniture or whatever, but the fam' was cleaning out the house and we found this in the basement. I thought it was pretty stupid to throw out a perfectly good couch, so." He shrugs.

"You brought a  _couch_ ," Harry blinks at him.

Niall nods and raises his eyebrows, obviously proud of himself.

Harry just looks at him for a moment and isn't even sure what expression his face is twisted into right now because that couch looks pretty fucking heavy and certainly looks like it would be difficult to carry up three flights of stairs and there's no elevators in this place and  _how?_

"Hey, you need some help with that?" Niall changes the subject and gestures vaguely behind Harry's back.

He glances down and notices that his suitcase has somehow managed to stay clutched tightly in his hand throughout this whole ordeal. Huh.

Before he can manage out an _oh it's alright, I can manage,_  Niall's flinging his suitcase over one shoulder and walking it over to the empty bed at the other side of the room and, well,  _okay then._

"So you new around here then?" Niall questions as he begins to pull Harry's clothes from his suitcase and apparently personal space or privacy isn't a thing anymore.

"Yeah." Harry nods, moving over to help Niall once his legs decide to start working again. "What about you? How long have you been here?"

"Transferred from Ireland four years ago. Was meant to only stay for a year or two but I didn't want to go back. Nothing happens in Mullingar." He shrugs and shoves a handful of Harry's pants into a drawer under his bed that he didn't know existed. 

"So you like it here, then?" Harry questions with raised eyebrows and Niall shrugs contemplatively, his expression considering. 

"It sure beats my home town," he decides eventually, "and I've got a lot of friends here, so." He shrugs. "What about you, then, how'd you end up in this place?" 

Harry considers the question for a moment.

His game plan for when he came here was to start fresh, be someone new, come up with some awesome story about how he had been sent here because he got caught sleeping with his Dad's new girlfriend, or snorting cocaine at the dinner table or something equally as ridiculous.

And Harry knows that if he tried hard enough, he could probably pull off an insane story like that, but the truth is that's just so uncharacteristically him. And fresh start or not, lying about who he is isn't something he wants to have to do. Ever.

Harry shrugs.

"Parents split up and didn't know what to do with me, I guess." It's the first time he's said it out loud. It stings, no surprise. But not as much as he expected it to.

Niall makes a face. "Parents suck."

Harry chuckles. "They really do." He could probably get used to this Niall kid. Just as well, considering he's going to be spending a hell of a lot of time with him throughout the course of the next couple of years or so.

They're nearly done arranging Harry's uniforms in a somewhat orderly fashion when a bell rings throughout the room, and Niall nearly jumps out of his skin with excitement.

"Yes!" He squeals out at an unbelievably loud pitch. "C'mon Harry, it's dinner time! Time to introduce you to everyone."

Harry swallows. He's never been good at introductions.

-

The two make it to the, what everyone calls "dining hall", in record time, Niall tugging harry along by his wrist even faster than before, and Harry nearly trips over his own feet on more than one occasion.

They more or less explode through the doors and Niall scans the place excitedly, clearly in search for someone.

"There they are!" He yells above the noisy chatter and starts pulling Harry through the crowd, mumbling a chain of "sorry, mate"s as he makes his way through, stepping on feet and nudging trays of pasta dangerously close to the edges of tables.

Niall comes to a halt in front of a table where two boys are already seated, engaged in an animated conversation. One has dark, neatly coiffed hair and his back to him, and the other has a brown buzz cut and big brown doe eyes.

"Y'alright, lads?" Niall booms out, throwing his arms wide, and the pair spin to face him. Their faces split into wide grins and instantly he's being pulled into a rough, jostling hug that's filled with "How you been, Niall?"s and "Good to see you again, bro"s.

They pull away after a moment and Niall pulls Harry into his side from where he had been awkwardly watching on.

"So lads, this is Harry, my new roomie." The other boys study him carefully and he feels himself shrinking under their gaze.

"Harry, this is Zayn and Liam." Niall points to the two boys respectively as they resume their seating, and pulls him down onto the bench beside himself and opposite the dark stylish boy-- Zayn.

"Hey new kid." He murmurs with a small nod of his head, and oh sweet jesus Harry thinks he's never been more uncomfortable in his life because  _fuck_ is Zayn fit up close. But it's the kind of unapproachable, potential Armani model sort of shit that is nicer to look at than it is to have romantic feelings for.

"Hey," He wheezes out in response with a weak smile and wants nothing more than to slap himself back into coherence because, for god's sake, this kid is probably already creeped out because Harry is staring at him so... so  _weirdly._

"Nice to meet you, Harry." The other boy, Liam, beams at him from across the table and offers out a hand which Harry shakes thankfully.

His palm is strong and warm and Harry suddenly feels a lot more comfortable. He feels his shoulders relax and settle a little, for the first time since he and Niall stepped foot inside the dining hall.

"Lunch-lady Tina made her infamous pasta for dinner, Niall." Liam twirls a bit around his fork and lifts it up like he's making a toast to the Irish lad, before placing it in his own mouth as a bowl is set down in front both Harry and Niall.

He makes a low whining noise in the back of his throat and makes no hesitation in setting towards just about inhaling half of his bowl that's filled to the brim with spaghetti and meatballs. 

"One of the many things I missed over the holidays," Niall murmurs through a mouthful of chewed up food, licking his lips as he goes, "is the meals they serve us in this place."

He sets a hand on Harrys arm and swallows before continuing, his voice serious. "Let me tell you, kid,  the food here is  _phenomenal."_

"Mmm," Zayn hums from across the table, shaking his head with a sarcastic little smirk. "You are so gross."

Niall makes a kissy face and sucks a piece of spaghetti through his pouted lips. Liam rolls his eyes and laughs.

"Hey, where's Louis?" Niall frowns around his mouthful of pasta, eyeing the other boys warily and nodding towards the empty seat beside Zayn.

Harry instantly notices the mood turn awkward and drop about tenfold. His ears perk up.

"He's coming back later on in the week." Zayn offers with an awkward scratch to the back of his neck. He twirls some spaghetti absently around his fork. "He's, uh... He's back in hospital."

"Shit,  _again_?"

"Yeah, he's... not doing too well, apparently." 

Harry isn't sure if he should ask about it or not, so he doesn't.

But he wants to.

There's so many questions floating around in his head. He wants to know who Louis is, why he's in hospital, why it's appropriate to say  _again_ , and what he isn't doing too well with.

Zayn takes a sip of his orange juice and then a tall, broad-shouldered man is clearing his throat into a microphone somewhere at the front of the room. Any chance Harry had to ask about it has gone now.

"Welcome back to another exciting, educating year at Parrish School for Boys." The man grins at them and the boys all cheer and whistle. Harry claps quietly. "And to the new students, welcome, we are  _so_ happy to have you here, and simply can't wait to get to know you a little better and show you what we're all about here at Parrish." Niall elbows him in the side giddily and shoots him a grin and raised eyebrows. Harry laughs under his breath and rolls his eyes, he likes Niall already.

Staring up at the man as he talks about this years main events or something-or-other, Harry puts two and two together and assumes that it's probably the headmaster, but his mind keeps wandering.

He thinks about this Louis kid- why he's in hospital and why it isn't the first time.

He thinks about why the expressions on Niall and Liam's faces had grown so worried and anxious when Zayn told them, and why Zayn had even been so reluctant to give them the news in the first place.

He doesn't bring it up. It's probably not his business.

-

Harry's first night at Parrish is... interesting.

After arriving there in the afternoon and settling into his new dorm room, the eight hours between dinner in the dining hall at six and the time that Harry actually manages to finally fall asleep, he meets so many new people, hears so many new names and learns so many new rules (both official, and those implied amongst the student body - like not ratting someone out if they see them sneaking a girl in (Harry doesn't think this will be a problem)) that his head feels like it's just about ready to explode.

He flops down on his haphazardly made bed at around ten, fully clothed, upon returning back from a briefing lecture, and his eyes instantly fall closed.

Harry thinks he's _definitely_ ready to sleep now, it's been such a long day filled with so many new things and his head hurts and he can feel the wave of sleep just at the edge of his consciousness, waiting to wash over him at any moment now.

And that's around the same time that a pair of hands grab him by the shoulders and yank him from his bed.

"Oh no you don't, Curly." Niall beams as he drags him towards the door, his arm clutching Harry into his side tightly - which is probably a good thing, considering the fact that Harry's half asleep and his eyes are closed and he has no idea what's going on. "This night has only just begun."

Harry groans and rubs at his eyes. "But 'm tired."

"Well you better wake up, then, because it's time for our Welcome Back Prank."

-

Two hours later Harry is standing between Zayn and Liam at the end of the hallway of the main building, watching as Niall places down the last water-filled, white plastic cup. It's one of thousands, probably.

The entire floor of the hallway is literally  _covered_  in little white cups, filled to the brim with water. There's a pattern of red ones in the centre that spell out the word "welcome".

The walls are covered. Ceiling to ground, in brightly coloured sticky notes. From the end of the hallway, it looks more like something out of a funhouse, or some deranged circus.

Harry stares at it, unmoving.

The most obscure prank that had ever occurred at his old school was some of the seniors burning a giant penis into the grass of the sports field, but this? This is just a whole new level.

Niall straightens up and admires their work, a proud smile on his lips.

"Well, boys," Zayn slings his arms around both Harry and Liam, "we've truly outdone ourselves this time."

Liam and Niall nod words of agreement. "Poor old Simon's gonna flip when he sees this."

They admire their work for a silent moment, just taking it all in.

It's Liam who finally speaks. "It's a shame The Tommo couldn't be here to help out."

Harry feels them grow rigid beside him.

"Yeah." Niall agrees quietly. "Louis always has the best ideas for pranks."

 _Oh_ , so they must be talking about this Louis kid again. Huh. Why is it that he is always discussed with an air of such... such worry? Such dejection? Such-

"C'mon guys," Zayn sighs releasing the boys' shoulders from his grasp and slinging his now empty duffle bag over his shoulder, "he'll be back soon. It's not like he's dead or anything."

The  _"not yet"_ hangs in the air, but it goes unspoken.

Niall and Liam stare at Zayn like they're waiting for him to say it at any moment, but he doesn't. Harry holds his breath.

The entire walk back to his own room - which admittedly isn't really that long, but still - Harry is thinking about Louis.

Funny, isn't it? How he's never even met the kid, never even seen a photo of him or been told about him directly. He doesn't know the slightest thing about this boy, and yet he has already succeeded in occupying the majority of his thoughts.

He already seems so mysterious, arriving to school days after everyone else has already settled in and grown accustomed to their new classes, only being spoken of in hushed tones laced with sadness.

But as Harry's head hits the pillow, all thought's of Louis disappear. And if he thought he was tired before, then now he must be monumentally exhausted.

He curls into the covers without even bothering to shower or brush his teeth, - that can wait until the morning, at least - and finds himself smiling as he drifts off into a deep, heavy sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment/kudos/never visit this page again/report me to the ao3 staff with complaints that my writing sucks you know the drill whatever floats your boats


	2. He comes with the rain and the end of a week

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's raining the day that Louis arrives. He's got a coat that's saturated and little raindrops dripping from his eyelashes and Harry thinks he's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter numero dos for your soul. x

"Curly,"

Harry frowns against the light, crinkling his nose in distaste.

"Cuuuuuurly,"

He grunts and crinkles his forehead, his eyebrows drawing together to form a tight line. Vague splotches of light start to form behind his eyelids in patterns of blue and yellow.

"Oh for fucks sake Harry, wake up!" The bed covers are ripped from his vice-like grasp in one swift movement and Harry is left shivering and half naked on the bed.

He snaps his eyes open only to squeeze them shut again immediately after he is perpetually blinded by the sunlight streaming in through the window behind his head. With squinted eyes, he mumbles something incoherent and makes little grabby hands for the comforter.

"It's half seven, mate, which means you have about ten minutes before we need to be in roll-call."

What the fuck? Roll call? Who is even talking to Harry right now and why are they-

He jolts into a sitting position in his bed, suddenly panting for breath, and stares around the room in his state of temporary amnesia.

Brown desks in the corner, tattered green couch in the centre of the room, a matted head of bottle blonde hair- Harry's at boarding school.

He drops his tense shoulders and scrubs his hands down his face, slowing down the erratic thumping of his pulse.

When he removes his hands, Niall is staring at him a little oddly, one eyebrow cocked and a playfully mocking smirk on his lips. He shakes his head.

"C'mon, get up, we want to have time to check out everyone's reactions to the main hall."

It takes about ten seconds for the memories of last night to come back all at once - thousands of little plastic cups and enough sticky notes to probably weigh more than Harry himself covering the entire hallway.

Harry has been at this school for exactly one night, no more or no less, and already he has managed to get himself involved in some perpetually shit-stirring prank. He shakes his head at himself as he thinks as much. He's sure his mother would be very proud.

Or not.

Niall claps his hands and pulls him from the bed in one quick, jerky movement.

"C'mon, curly, up! Shower time!" He pulls him into the bathroom and turns on the taps before immediately shoving Harry inside - still in his boxers.

"Oi, at least let me take my pants off first you shit!" Harry chastises and gestures down to his now soaked nether regions.

"No getting naked until at least the third date, Harold, what kind of boy do you think I am?" Niall puts a hand to his chest in mock offence and Harry cackles at him as he peels the wet fabric from his hips.

He chucks the sopping wet heap at Niall's face but he dodges at the last minute as he sprints from the room yelling "You have a pretty dick!"

Harry shakes his head and laughs to himself, things just seem to flow so easily with Niall.

He hopes it will be like that with everyone.

-

"Fuckin' bullshit."

Niall shakes his head and crosses his arms stubbornly across his chest as he stands at the end of the hallway, his legs splayed wide in the defensive way that Harry is soon to learn is a pretty common stance for Niall.

Harry glances across at him before turning to look down the hallway himself - It's almost completely cleaned up.

Aside from a few post-it notes stuck way up in the corners where the ceiling meets the walls, too high for the cleaners to reach (and thinking back now Harry doesn't even really remember how they reached up there themselves but he's sure it had something to do with Zayn sitting on his shoulders), the hallway looks entirely unaffected.

Other than being a little pissed off that all of their hard work had gone to shit and been cleaned up before any of the students even got the chance to see it, Harry is actually pretty impressed that the cleaners managed to restore the hallway to its normal state in such a short amount of time. He mentally congratulates them with raised eyebrows, but also curses them for ruining their prank at the same time.

"Fuckin' bullshit aye," Niall repeats himself, "that was a bloody great prank, then they had to go 'n fuck it up with their pissin' around and cleanin' and-"

 _"Niall."_ Liam interrupts from somewhere beside him, and after a quick glance Niall drops his face like a defeated six-year-old who can't get his own way.

"Yeah, this sucks," Agrees Zayn from Harry's other side, "but we can get them back."

He's got a mischievous glint in his eye and a crooked grin is starting to form at the edges of his mouth as he nods slowly and turns to face the other boys.

"Ten times worse, even."

Niall's expression turns from brooding and sulky to cheeky and mischievous in about one tenth of a second, and he opens his mouth to speak, but before he can get his words out the school bell is chiming through the corridor and his expression distorts with distaste.

"What class do you have up first, Harry?" Liam questions, genuinely interested, and that's around the same time that Harry realises that he actually has to  _go to classes_ here.

God damn it. 

-

Harry's first class is... boring.

As are the rest of the classes on his first day.

They all go about more or less the same way: the teacher will introduce themselves as Dr or Mr or Mrs something, even though the majority of the boys already know all of them; they will briefly discuss the topics that they will be covering in class this year; they hand out an assessment calendar that they are told to not to lose and "Keep it somewhere safe, because this little piece of paper will be like your life support for the next ten months."

Other than discovering that Liam is in the majority of his classes, the only other acknowledgeable thing that happened was lunch.

Apparently running around on the sports field playing competitive games of footie or whatever else, is only something that boys do when there's... well... when there's girls at the school to impress.

And considering this is called Parrish School for  _Boys_ , and subsequently the entire student body is made up of males, the majority of the students used the lunch hour for, well, eating lunch. (Which Harry was quite thankful for, due to the fact that he was tired as shit and had also missed breakfast. Both thanks to Niall, mind you.)

"So I was thinking," A bit of ham flies out of Niall's mouth as he gestures at Zayn with his half eaten sandwich, his expression dead serious.

"We get 'em back, you know?"

The other three stare at him blankly, Zayn and Liam clearly both as tired as Harry.

"What are you on about?" Zayn grumbles with heavy eyes before he takes a sip of whatever canned concoction it is that he's drinking.

"The welcome back prank, I mean, we gotta show 'em that they can't stop us from doing shit like this. Pull an even bigger, better prank on 'em." He has a mischievous glint in his eye. Harry wonders how he always seems to be so completely full of energy, even though Harry knows he's running on around only four hours sleep.

"Yeah, that was my idea, I said that this morning." Zayn frowns half-heartedly, his eyes closed and his chin resting in the palms of his hands. "I said we'd get them back worse."

"Yeah, but I mean like...  _a lot_  worse." Niall raises his eyebrows at all of the other boys, as if to say  _if you know what I mean_. Harry is the only one looking at him. "We need to pull off the best prank of all time."

"And how do you suppose we do that, Niall." Liam yawns behind his apple that he's gnawing at noncommittally.

His sentence begins with "Sheep - thousands of them." and everything in between is a huge blur of impossible crazy things that could potentially get them expelled from this place and honestly how the  _fuck_ does Niall even come up with half of this shit?

By the time he finishes with " _right_  on top of the headmaster's desk." Harry, Liam and Zayn are all staring at him in disbelief, various stages of bewilderment shown on their faces.

Liam begins to shake his head slowly. 

"Sometimes I wonder what goes on in your head, mate."

Niall shrugs and winks. "So that's a yes to the sheep? Because my uncle-"

"Niall _."_

 _"-_ knows this guy who can hook us up. He said some of them might be slightly vicious but-"

" _Niall."_

"-as long as we don't spook them or look them directly in the eye then it should be-"

" _Niall!_ _"_

 _"_ Alright, alright,  _fine_. But it was a bloody good idea."

Zayn makes eye contact with Harry and makes a disbelieving gesture towards Niall before chuckling and shaking his head.

Harry smiles in return.

"So Harry," he begins as he starts to pull apart what appears to be a turkey sandwich, "you've been here for a total of what, 20 hours absolute max, and we've already stolen your innocence. How does that make you feel?"

" _Hey."_ Harry mumbles, frowning a little, "I'm not that innocent."

Niall snorts into his drink, spluttering it everywhere a little. "Yeah, okay, you keep telling yourself that." He pats Harry on the head for emphasis.

"What makes you think I'm innocent?" Harry's brow creases and he sets down his fork.

They're silent for a little bit while the other three boys smirk at each other across the table. " _Look_ at you." Zayn states as if it's obvious.

Harry glances down his body then back up at Zayn, a questioning frown still present on his face.

"What?"

Zayn and Liam share a quick smirk. Harry scowls at them.

"I don't know Harry, I just..." Liam waves a hand in front of his own face, gesturing vaguely as he speaks. "I think it's just the curls."

"My hair?"

Liam nods. "They make you look..." He pauses and glances around at the other boys. "Cute."

"They make me look cute?"

"It's definitely the curls." Zayn nods, a shit-eating smirk on his face.

"And the dimples." Liam supplies.

"And the big doe eyes."

"And the disney princess lips."

"And the baby-soft skin, and the-"

"Okay!" Harry interrupts, throwing his hands up. "I get it, I look like a six year old, thank you."

"Aw Hazza." Niall pulls him into his side and scruffs up his hair, "You don't look like a baby. You're just..."

"Cute." Zayn finishes for him, and all three of them nod in agreement.

"Yeah, cute."

Harry laughs in spite of himself as he picks up his fork again and resumes eating, he finds that his smile is genuine. "I literally hate you all already."

"We love you too, Hazza, now if you're not going to eat that egg then feel free to pass it on as a small donation to the needy charity case of Niall Horan's empty stomach."

"You can't possibly have an empty stomach." Zayn rolls his eyes from the other side of the table, but the egg is already in Niall's mouth by the time he finishes his sentence.

Harry shakes his head and punches Niall playfully on the shoulder. "Twat."

-

Okay, so, maybe there  _had_ been something other than lunch that was interesting - music class.

Upon entering the room, Harry notices that there are no desks or chairs to be seen - anywhere, at all, in the entire room. The only furniture in the room consists of large beanbags, piano stools and keyboard stands. There are sheer curtains and beads hanging up in front of the windows, casting subtle patterns of pinks and yellows and blues across the dimly-lit walls.

Hundreds of band posters and old record album covers cover the walls from ceiling to floor, and the whole room feels a little obnoxiously hipster and low-fi. But Harry absolutely loves it.

"Afternoon, kids, you're all looking chipper and energetic on this fine day." A man grins at them from the other side of the room, swivelling around from where he had been lazily playing one of the pianos. 

"Take a seat anywhere you like. Floor, beanbag, whatever suits."

Harry watches as the students lower themselves to the floor one by one and scans the room for a familiar face.

He hasn't met anyone in this class yet but he recognises one of the kids from lunch when he spoke to Liam briefly about breaking a handle on one of the drawers in the bathroom cabinet. Harry joins the dots and assumes that this kid is Liam's roommate, so he makes his way over to him.

The boy looks up as Harry makes his way over and offers him a warm smile - Harry can't even describe how happy he is that this kid isn't an asshole. 

"Hey, it's Harry, right?"

Harry nods and smiles a little in return. "You're Liam's roomie, yeah?"

"That's me," the boy offers his hand out, "Josh is the name, this is Dan and Sandy." Harry fumbles a small wave and nod of hello to the other boys and takes his stocky hand and gives it a strong shake, not wanting to seem like a weak  _pansy boy_ or anything and hey- cut him some slack, it's his first day and he's nervous.

As soon as Harry's hand is in his, though, he's being pulled down onto the beanbag beside Josh in a flurry of papers and his curls flying everywhere.

"So," Josh begins in a hushed whisper, "we've got a new music teacher this year. Rumour has it that old man Harvey got fired."

The other two boys lean in suddenly and one of them - Dan? - nods enthusiastically.

"Didn't you hear? Rumour has it that he got the sack for putting a kid in hospital after smashing a guitar over the poor boy's head and calling him the  _'worst fucking bass player that ever walked this earth.'"_

The boy that Harry is assuming to be Sandy nods then, too. "I heard he also used to snort coke before his classes, but it's whatever." He shrugs.

"My name is Nicholas Peter Grimshaw, but you can all call me Nick." The man on the piano stool announces to the class, "Not Mr Nick, and definitely not Mr Grimshaw. Mr Grimshaw is the name of my father, who is a bitter and humourless 60-year-old man who breeds lizards for a living."

Huh. So between cocaine-snorting, kid-hospitalising ex-teachers, being yanked down onto a beanbag and now lizard breeding fathers of quiffed, exceptionally hipster teachers, music class is already turning out to be quite interesting.

(Though Harry suspects that the whole cocaine thing is probably one of those conspiracy theories that the kids make up themselves to make their school sound more fun and interesting.)

Nick lets them goof off and play whatever they choose on whatever instrument they like for the whole lesson because it's their first day back and he knows how "emotionally and physically draining it is to have to get up for school every morning." Harry thinks he's going to like this class a lot.

He ends up discovering that Josh is absolutely mental on the drums - which Harry is beyond jealous of, as that's the one thing he just simply does  _not_  have a knack for - and paired with Sandy on bass and Dan on lead guitar they make a pretty fucking good team.

Harry tells them as much, and they thank him and say that they are just looking for a singer before they actually start making any proper music like they have been waiting so long to do.

Harry swallows and keeps his mouth shut about it. He knows he's an okay singer, at least, but he doesn't want to overstep any boundaries or whatever.

He'll tell them. Eventually.

"Hey, didn't Tommo say he was gonna sing for us at the end of last year?" Dan frowns as he strums absently on his guitar, stretched out across a beanbag.

Harry's heard that name only a couple of times, but he knows who they're talking about - that Louis kid who's in hospital  _"again"_ and isn't coming in until later on in the week, for whatever reason he doesn't know.

"Yeah, but he..." Josh waves his hand through the air. "You know. I don't know if he'd still be up for it."

The other two nod in awkward agreement, and there are so many questions that Harry wants to ask.

He doesn't ask any of them.

"It'll be a bloody shame if he isn't," Sandy cocks an eyebrow and shakes his head slowly, "that kid's got the voice of an angel." 

-

By Harry's third night there, he's grown quite accustomed to his new surroundings.

He and Niall's room is properly trashed by now, but Harry just narrows that down to the factor of two teenage boys living together with no nagging parents. Figures.

After lights out that night, the two of them sneak out into the hallway and make their way down to Liam's room, collect him silently, and sneak into Zayn's, just like they had last night, and the night before.

Zayn doesn't have a roommate, so they don't have to worry about some snot-nosed rich kid dobbing on them for being up past lights out or listening in to their conversations and spreading the shit they say.

It would probably be easier for the four of them to meet in Niall and Harry's room, but considering the state of the place right now, that's probably not the best idea Harry's had all week.

And it's not like Josh, Liam's roomie, is exactly snot-nosed or the tattle-tale kind, it's just that he's not part of their, like...  _gang._  He's still friends with them, Harry had grown an instant liking for him (he plays the  _drums_  after all, how fucking cool is that?!), but he has his own group of close friends. And it's probably not in his best interest to stay up to whatever ungodly hour in the morning listening to these four talk about crap (because honestly, what  _do_ they even manage to talk about for so long?). _  
_

So consequently, Zayn's room is assigned as their (un)official meeting spot. Which makes sort of a problem due to his obsession with order and personal space, but hey, it works. And besides, Zayn's room is always somehow toasty and warm when the rest of the building feels like fucking Antarctica, even if it does reek of smoke from his hidden packs of cigarettes that feed his unhealthy nicotine addiction.

Harry's sprawled out across the bare mattress next to Zayn's bed when Niall comes up with the idea.

"Let's play truth or dare."

Zayn glances down from where he's propped up against the wall, his hands tucked behind his head.

"Yeah, Niall, because we are a bunch of seventh-grade schoolgirls. Sounds like fun. Want me to braid your hair, too?" He rolls his eyes.

"Aw, c'mon." Niall shuffles about on the ground. "It'll be fun, give Harry here a chance to get to know us better."

Niall gives him the irresistible bright-blue puppy dog eyes, so it's only a matter of seconds before Zayn is huffing out an "Alright fine, you little shit."

He grins and punches the air, wiggling around a little like an excited puppy.

"Alright, you first Zayn. Truth or dare?" 

Zayn frowns, naturally. "Truth."

"Who was the last person you kissed?" Liam equips instantly before Niall even has a chance to think about it.

He smirks triumphantly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Johnny Wrath." Here, he pauses for effect. "The senior."

Niall gapes. "Bull!"

"Is not! He lives near me, true to God. He invited me over on the break while his parents were out. Hasn't spoken to me since, mind you, guess the lad was just a little bi-curious, is all."

Harry's suddenly a lot more interested in the conversation.

 _He?_  Zayn's  _gay?_ Or bi, whatever, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that he swings  _that_ way. Or more importantly, the other two don't seem to really give a shit.

Harry's known that he's gay for a long while now. The thing is, he had also been hiding it for a while, too. He's not still in the closet  _now_ or anything, his family and close friends from home already know. But... Harry is yet to mention it to any of his new friends at Parrish.

He was going to tell them soon enough, really, he was, it's just that he wasn't sure how they would take it.

The last thing Harry wants is to be stuck with a homophobic arse of a roommate who makes his every day a living hell all because he's into dudes. But if Zayn's gay (or bi, whatever, who cares), well that just makes Harry a lot more confident in telling them.

"Shit, Johnny Wrath, kissing a dude..." Niall squints his eyes and stares into the distance. "I can't even imagine it."

"I know, right, I feel like I've corrupted him." Zayn chuckles and places his hands behind his head again. "Would have been better if I was fully gay, you know? Just would have made it that much better, really."

And  _okay_ so that cleared the air rather bluntly - Zayn's bi. Still excellent. (And not because Harry has any intentions of making a move on him, now. Regardless of the fact that Zayn's facial bone structure looks like it has been carved by the hands of an angel.)

"What about you Hazza? Who was the last person you kissed? And when?" Niall twists his neck backwards to look at Harry. He's still staring at the roof.

The thing is, it's already pretty late at night, and Harry's brain-to-mouth filter isn't exactly working 100% right now. He knows what he wants to say, and the main outcome he wants it to have, but he just can't figure  _how_ exactly to say it. He stares blankly at the ceiling for a few more seconds, his mouth moving randomly as he tries to conjure up a mildly coherent sentence when-

"I'm gay."

His eyes widen and his body goes rigid and  _damn_  his stupid fucking mouth. Damn it all to hell. This was not how he expected it to go. Screw "not quite 100%", his brain-to-mouth filter isn't even working 10% right now.

"Uh..." Liam speaks up from the other side of Zayn's bed. "Congratulations?"

Harry sits up, frowning, suddenly nervous. "What I mean was that, I uh-"

"I knew it!" Niall shrieks suddenly from about three feet away from Harry's ear, bouncing up off the floor and pulling Harry into what could quite possibly be the tightest hug he has ever participated in and...  _Why_ is Niall hugging him...

Zayn breathes out an "Oh god damn it." and punches his knee and Liam claps his hands like an excited seal and, okay,  _what the fuck is going on._

 _"_ You owe me ten quid, pretty boy, now pay up." Niall drops Harry and and places his hand palm up under Zayn's nose, a huge grin splitting his face in half.

"Bloody Irish twat." Zayn sighs and pulls his wallet from under his pillow and digs around in it for the change.

"You love me." Niall sticks his tongue out and accepts the coins mercilessly. "You also love my impeccable gaydar."

What.

"Did you just use the word  _impeccable?_ "

Niall knew he was gay?

"Yeah, I did, is there a problem with that?"

They had a  _bet?_

"You had a  _bet?_ "

The three stop bickering and turn around to face Harry. It seems as though they had forgotten his presence.

"Oh, yeah." Niall shrugs, unaffected. "I thought it was blatantly obvious, but Zayn here said that you looked like too much of a ladies-man."

"I mean come on," Zayn defends himself, "women eat up that angel-faced cherub curls shit."

"What?" Harry frowns defensively, "I'm not blatantly obvious... Am I?"

Niall smiles apologetically. "Sorry mate, I could have picked it up from a mile away."

Harry crosses his arms and pouts. "You could not."

"Oh don't be a giant curly-haired baby." Niall teases and tousles Harry's hair as he falls onto the spare mattress next to him. "There's  _heaps_ of fit guys here, if I might say so myself."

"Niall, I swear sometimes you aren't even 100% straight yourself, buddy." Liam jokes and shakes his head. Niall winks at him.

"Only for you, Li."

"Shit, is that really the time?" Zayn raises his eyebrows at the alarm clock on his bedside table. It's blinking 1:04 AM. "I guess we should probably get some sleep."

"Hey, that reminds me of that time when-"

"Niall get the fuck out of my room." 

"Alright, princess, don't get your knickers in a twist." Niall raises his hands defensively and rolls off the spare bed, unceremoniously pulling Harry along beside him.

"See you lot in the morning, my preciouses." Niall calls out dramatically and blows them each a kiss as he trudges along sleepily toward the door, Harry in tow. Harry says goodbye to Liam and Zayn, notably less boldly, and follows him out.

It's not until his head hits the pillow and he's got the comforter pulled up right underneath his chin that he thinks about Louis again.

It's a little strange, really, that he keeps thinking about this boy so much even thought he's never met him before.

There isn't really much for him to think about, considering he has very little information about him as it is. So he lets his mind wander, and he finds himself imagining what the boy looks like.

It's hard, without knowing anything about his personality or whatever else. But for some reason, Harry pictures him to be jaw-droppingly pretty.

Maybe that's just what his mind wants.

-

It's raining the day that Louis arrives.

When Harry and Niall trudge into Zayn's room on Thursday after classes, because they're bored in their own, and Zayn's is the only place in this whole school that for some reason isn't always freezing, he's just standing there, unmoving, in the middle of the room, staring at the floor.

His soaking wet hair is matted to his forehead. His skin is glistening with tiny raindrops that fall from his eyelashes and get stuck at the curve of his cheekbones, before falling down past the hollow of his cheeks. There's a puddle of water around his feet and Harry finally puts two and two together and realises that Louis' entire body is dripping. He's saturated. Saturated and beautiful.

"Shit, Louis!" Niall snaps into action and gasps from beside him and suddenly he's rushing to the boy's side. "You're soaked! What did you do, walk all the way here?"

Louis seems to snap out of his reverie at Niall's words and allows himself to be stripped of his dripping coat. He shrugs.

"Sorta, I caught a train and didn't have enough money to make it the whole way."

"Oh bloody hell, you should have just called one of us. We could have sent someone to come and pick you up or something, you dolt. Or... I dunno... You know we would have been more than happy to help!" Niall looks like a fussing mother hen, hanging Louis' coat over the radiator to dry and flapping his hands around himself as he scurries about the room. Louis is yet to notice Harry's unmoving presence in the corner.

Louis shrugs again, and Harry instantly drops his eyes to watch the way it makes his collar bones pop out under the neck of his knitted jumper.

"C'mon," Niall orders, shoving him towards the conjoining bathroom, "have a nice hot shower and get changed - put on some dry clothes, yeah? I'll go tell Zayn that you're here."

Louis follows Niall's orders and pads into the bathroom, leaving little wet footprints as he goes. It's only a matter of seconds before Harry hears the water running and Niall emerges from the room, closing the door behind him.

He notices Harry still standing by the door and pauses for a moment, giving him a confused little frown. "Y'alright, mate?"

"That was Louis." Harry blinks at him, unable to move. His jaw seems to have become unhinged and is now hanging loosely from his face.

"Yes, the lemon, could have nearly frozen himself to death out there in the rain, can you believe it?" Niall throws his hands up and starts to haplessly cover the puddle with a thin layer of tissues and napkins that he's gathered from around the place, trying and failing to soak it up.

"Is he even real." Harry stares at the closed bathroom door, where he can hear the sound of the shower running. "Tell me I just hallucinated. Tell me the lunch lady is crazy and sometimes likes to put LSD in the lasagne."

Niall cranes his neck to look up at him from where he's crouched over the puddle, a wad of napkins in his hand. "What the hell are you on about, Hazza?" 

"His bone structure, it- ...his cheekbones are so sharp they could cut glass."

Niall blinks.

"His jaw line looks like it has been carved by the gods." Harry shakes his head, staring at the closed bathroom door. "He  _is_ a god."

Niall seems to consider this for a moment, eyebrows raised and chin crumpled contemplatively. "Yes." He agrees finally and straightens his spine into a standing position, "A very fucked up god with lots of problems." He cracks his neck and makes his way over to the door. Harry frowns.

"What's that supposed to-"

"Listen I've got to go find Zayn and Liam and tell them that Louis' here, you just sit tight in case he comes out of the shower and thinks that everyone has, like, abandoned him or something, okay?" He yanks the door open and makes his way out. It's not until the door has clicked closed again behind him that Harry snaps into action, realising what he's getting himself into.

He makes a frantic dash for the door.

"Wait, Niall! What do- What if he, like, comes out of the shower... or something? I don't know how to- ...what do I do?" 

Niall turns around and gives him a funny little look, the smile playing on his lips counteracting the crease that has formed between his eyebrows. "Try talking to him, Harry." He shrugs and starts walking backwards, "Tell him you think he looks like a god."

Harry rolls his eyes and sticks his middle finger up at Niall's retreating back, shaking with laughter at his own joke.

When he's well and truly out of sight Harry finally decides he should probably reenter the room at some stage in the near future, so he pushes up off the door frame with a sigh and softly pulls the door shut behind him.

He turns around and eyes the room sceptically. The bathroom door is still firmly shut and he can hear the shower running inside, which is a good sign that Louis won't be out for a while yet. 

There's a set of shelves at the end of Zayn's bed - something he had brought in himself despite the rule that says they're not allowed to. The shelves are white and finish just above Harry's head, which means they are pretty tall, and each shelf is jam packed with a neat row of books, with a little pot plant on the middle shelf. Harry thinks there must be at least 200 books in total, and he's never heard of the title of a single one.

Zayn has also stacked three neat little piles of records in the corner of his desk at the edge of the room, they cover pretty much its entire surface so Harry's not really sure what space he uses to study - it seems pretty uncharacteristically Zayn to study on his bed or the floor.

Between his arrival and the grand total of two days that Harry has been here, he realises that he and Niall have probably spent more time in this room than they have in their own, yet it still manages to remain a hell of a lot cleaner.

Something to do with Zayn's penchant for personal space and Niall's lack of it, probably. He wonders if it will stay that way now that Louis has arrived.

He eyes the two small suitcases that have been abandoned somewhere near the spare-- Louis' bed, and his mind drifts back to his first fleeting moments in this place, where Niall unabashedly pulled Harry's suitcase apart, packing it away for him, and wonders if he should do the same for Louis.

There's a big difference between him and Niall, though. And Harry's quiet and cautious in all the places that Niall is loud and carefree. 

Unpacking Louis' belongings would be incredibly uncharacteristic of Harry, and he's not too sure how comfortable he would feel ransacking through someone else's stuff, anyway - who knows what he could find in there?? - but he picks up the suitcases and places them on the end of the bed just in case. It can't kill him to be polite.

He sighs and scrubs a hand down his face, a wave of tiredness suddenly hitting him, as he plonks himself down on the edge of Zayn's bed even though he knows he hates it when the covers get messed up. Sitting on the spare bed that has now turned out to be Louis' would probably be a little weird now, though, and he doesn't want to overstep any boundaries that he might have that Harry doesn't know about... He has never met the kid, after all. He reaches lackadaisically to the side pulls the first book he grabs off the adjacent shelf, scanning it absently. Some piece written by an author that Harry has never heard of before, Franz Kafka. He runs his fingers down the worn down spine, wondering where Zayn bought it from and how many times he's read it - it's on his "favourites" shelf. Hopefully he doesn't mind Harry touching it.

He's not sure how much time passes, and he's not really reading the words of Franz Kafka's  _Metamorphosis_ that are inked onto the page in his hands, the letters swirling together in a mess of black markings, making the backs of his eyes hurt. He doesn't even notice that the sound of running water has stopped flowing from under the crack in the bathroom door.

Harry squeezes his eyes shut tight and rubs at his eyelids with the heels of his hands, splotches of blue and yellow forming in his vision from the pressure. He's just so tired and his eyes hurt and he knows that he probably needs glasses, and the rubbing reaches the point where he simply can't stop, it just feels so  _good._ He is sucked into the downward-spiralling vortex of just  _pressing_ at his eyes because it feels so good on his straining retinas.

A door opens, and in his state of perpetual blindness Harry assumes that Niall must have returned, for which he is quite thankful, but no one has said anything yet and a good ten seconds have passed and Harry still can't see properly so he starts to panic because  _what if he's destroyed his vision forever_. More silent, sightless seconds pass. He could be staring at someone's crotch for all he knows.

A wave of hot, damp air washes over his body and the room smells faintly of soap and steam. Harry frowns, blinks rapidly, and parts of his sight start to come back.

Louis is standing about three steps away from the bathroom, staring at him blankly, when Harry's vision is restored. He is wearing decidedly drier clothes than before and his lips aren't blue anymore, so that's probably a good sign. His white jumper looks fluffy and soft and he has little water droplets clinging to his fringe. Harry wants to brush them away.

"Um, hi." Harry manages to croak out shakily. "'m Harry."

Louis blinks owlishly at him for a second before glancing about the room, confusion clearly present on his face. He settles for staring at Harry again.

He shifts uncomfortably on Zayn's bed, twisting the book in his hands.

"Hello." Louis says as he sets the towel down on the rickety old desk in the corner by the bathroom door. "Why are you in my room?"

Harry's cheeks instantly flush about a thousand different shades of red at the same time and he opens and closes his mouth a few times, trying to find the right thing to say. He must look like a freaking stunned goldfish right now, he thinks, but he's half asleep and still partly blind from his eye-rubbing frenzy that he is quickly growing to regret and his brain-to-mouth filter is apparently not working 100%. Or at all. Again.

"I'm new." Is all he manages to come up with, and mentally kicks himself straight away for being so god damn hopeless with words.

"Right." Louis says as he perches on the edge of his own bed, still staring at Harry. He thinks it's weird seeing Louis, a new face, in Zayn's room. He knows it's stupid, as Louis has lived here for the past however many years of his life and Harry's only been here for a few days, but it's still weird.

"So why is it that you are in here, exactly?" His voice is different to how it had been before Niall left. Looser, somehow, and Harry quickly remembers what the boys had said in music class about Louis having a good singing voice. It seems as if the steam from the shower had relaxed his vocal chords. Or as if the shower had cleansed his mind and soul not only his body, and now he was free to-- shut  _up_ Harry, what are you even saying? Now is  _not_ the time.

"I uh, I'm friends with Zayn? I guess?" Harry's pretty sure that the piece of literature in his hands is going to be scrunched up into a tiny ball by the time Niall gets back, that fucking Irish twat. "I'm Niall's new roommate."

Louis looks genuinely taken aback at this, and Harry mentally files it away as the first time he saw Louis express an emotion that wasn't just blankly staring at a bare surface.

"Niall has a new roommate?"

"Yes?"

"What happened to George?"

"I- I don't know? I just-"

"That's a shame." Louis cuts him off. He stands up and turns his back to Harry, starts unpacking his case.

Harry stares at the back of his damp head, the conversation appears to be over. His mouth hangs open a little, he can't seem to place what just happened. Did anything even just happen? Or is Harry imagining all of this? Someone pinch him-

"I moved your suitcase for you." Harry hears himself blurt out suddenly, and instantly scrunches his eyes shut because  _why the fuck did you just say that._

Louis turns around with raised eyebrows and stares at him for a moment. Harry stares back, his lips parted.

"Okay." Louis replies before turning back around, unaffected.

"Don't worry I didn't, like, go through your stuff, or anything... I mean, I didn't touch anything if you were-"

"What did you say your name was?" Louis cuts through the middle of his sentence, his back still turned as he removes his perfectly folded clothes from his suitcase and places them straight into his drawers in neat rows.

Harry hesitates for a moment and tries not to be offended that Louis didn't remember his name because a) he just fucking met the guy and is therefore b) probably not his number one priority right now.

"Harry." He breathes out eventually, like it's taken all the strength he has left just to remember his own name.

Louis nods without turning around. "Well thanks for moving my shit,  _Harry_."

He thinks for a moment that Louis might have intended that to sound sarcastic, but before he gets a chance to question it the door is flying open with a creak and Niall spills into the room, Liam and Zayn in tow, a mess of arms and legs and quiffs. Harry breathes out a sigh of relief because that  _fuck_. He can't quite palce when exactly this god forsaken room had become quite so small and humid, he hadn't realised he'd been sweating until a bit starts to roll down his temple, and he quickly wipes it away with embarrassment.

Louis looks up when he hears the door open, and his face softens into a small smile. "Hey, guys."

Liam and Zayn instantly rush forward and encircle him in a tight three-person hug that looks like it probably hovers right on the line between comforting and painful, but none of them seem to be giving any indication that they are going to pull back any time soon. 

Harry swallows.

"Shit, we missed you so much, man." Zayn mumbles from somewhere inside the knot of gently swaying bodies.

"Yeah, we were so fucking worried." Liam adds and Harry frowns.

He's seen numerous reunitings (reunitations?) over the course of the past week, and none of them have been anywhere near as heartfelt and dramatic as this.

He knows that Louis' been in the hospital, he remembers what Zayn had said on the first day of school, but he doesn't know why. He seems fine now, though, but he's sure that's probably the reason that they were all so worried about him. He supposes.

"I'm fine, really." Louis breathes out in response and untangles himself from his friends' limbs, resuming the unpacking of his suitcase with a little shrug of his shoulders.

Liam, Zayn and Niall all exchange a worried glance, and Harry can tell that this isn't the first time they've done this and  _what the fuck_  is going on.

"Here Lou, let me get that." Liam lifts both of Louis' cases onto the ground before he has a chance to protest, and sets about covering his single mattress with the crisp sheets that had been folded by the head of the bed.

"I can do it Li, really, it's fine." Louis insists with a little frown, as he tries to tuck in the corner that Liam had been working on.

"Just sit down, yeah? Been a long day for you, I'm sure, what with walking halfway from Doncaster and whatnot." Niall places his hands on Louis' shoulders and directs him towards the edge of Zayn's bed.

He falls down with a huff. "I didn't walk halfway from Doncaster, I walked from the Euston train station, Niall."

"Euston station?!" Niall gapes at him incredulously. "That's more than an hour walk away, Lou! And it's pissing down with rain!"

Louis looks at his lap and tugs at the sleeves of his white cable knit jumper, pulling them down over the heels of his hands and shrugs. "I didn't have enough money for a ticket to go the whole way."

Zayn appears to have found comfort in pressing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger when Harry looks up as he speaks. "Louis you know you could have-"

He shakes his head mid sentence, cutting himself off.

"Never mind. I'm just glad you're okay now."

There's a beat of silence which is filled only with the sound of Louis' quiet breathing. In and out, small little puffs of air.

"I'm okay." He concedes finally, and Harry senses that it means more than just that that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to leave comments and tell me what you think n_n


	3. He's just pretty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry doesn't believe in love at first sight, because that's not how things work and that's not what this is. This isn't even a thing, not really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiiiiiii. Well, here you go.

Harry wakes up the next morning thinking about sapphire blue eyes and razor sharp cheekbones.

He takes a shower thinking about side-swept caramel brown hair and glistening water droplets falling gracefully from thick, curved eyelashes.

When he walks to the dining hall for breakfast, he's thinking about small sock-clad feet that make little pattering sounds on the carpet of Zayn's dorm.

It's frustrating, really, knowing that he's seen this kid a grand total of  _once_ and the conversation they had together was probably one of the most awkward things Harry has ever experienced. Yet despite all this, he won't get out of Harry's head. And it's not even just his face, but it's the way he parted his lips in confusion when Harry said something he didn't understand, and the way that he stood curling into himself, his hand on his opposite elbow and his eyes downcast to the floor.

And Harry doesn't believe in love at first sight. Because that's not how things like this work, and that's not what this is.  _This_ isn't even a thing. Not really. Louis is just... pretty. Just pretty. Harry's allowed to think he's pretty, isn't he?

It doesn't matter that he knows nothing about him as a person. The reasons as to why the other boys always fawn over him so much are irrelevant. That's none of Harry's business. It doesn't matter that Louis showed next to no interest toward Harry when they met. It doesn't. And Harry doesn't mind. He doesn't even know if Louis swings  _that_ way. It's not like he has any intentions on actually  _making a move._

He just thinks he's pretty.

-

The once empty seat on the other side of Zayn at their table in the dining hall has now been filled by a very Louis-shaped figure. His head is down and his fringe (which is considerably drier than yesterday) is falling in front of his eyes so Harry can't see his face, but he knows it's him.

Christ, every single 48 shade of brown in the world put together wouldn't be enough to describe the colour of his soft, wispy hair.

He glances up when Harry and Niall sit down - and, wow, his eyes are about ten times bluer than Harry remembered them being, and the intensity of their colour actually  _physically_  knocks the breath out of him for a moment, and all he can do is just stare at him like a bloody fish. God, he's probably making such a great second impression after his first one went so fantastically, too.

The bright cerulean looks out of place next to the puffy, deep purple circles of skin beneath them, and the emotion doesn't quite reach his eyes when he flashes them a quick smile.

The air feels tense when Harry sits down, he notices it right away. It's the kind of tense that feels as though there's so much to be said, so much that these three boys have to say to Louis and each other, but  they can't. Because now isn't the time, or because there will never be a time, Harry doesn't know, but he hopes it's not always going to be like this now.

Louis sniffs and rubs his nose with the back of his hand before placing a phone to his ear with a mumbled "Sorry, won't be a second boys."

He picks absently at the corner of the table while he waits for whoever it is that he's calling to pick up. His hands are small, like the rest of him, and his nails are bitten right down to the flesh.

"Hi mum"

Harry tries to tune out of the conversation. It's rude to listen, he thinks, but it's kind of hard not to when Louis' sitting barely a metre away from him and no one else at the table is talking.

_"Yeah, s'all good now-_

_Yes, of course-_

_Ahuh-_

_You don't need to remind me, mum-_

_Yes, this morning-_

_Two, ahuh-_

_I know-_

_Okay-_

_I know-_

_I love you too-_

_Bye."_

He places the old beaten up nokia on the edge of the table and stares at it for a moment like he expects it to start ringing again. The corner of his bottom lip is drawn between his teeth and there's a little frown spreading across his brow.

"That your mum?" Zayn's question falls a little short of casual. Louis nods without looking away.

"She doing okay?"

Louis nods again.

No one talks for a little bit, and fuck it's so tense that Harry just wants to drown himself in his orange juice.

"You didn't tell her about the trains, did you?" It's not a question.

"It doesn't matter to her, Zayn."

Harry notices the way Zayn's brow furrows as he exchanges a glance with Niall across the table. But he doesn't answer.

-

Louis is in Harry's English class. He is also in his geography class, his history class, and his math class.

He's not sure if this is a blessing or the complete opposite.

They are seated together by default, thanks to Liam. It's the same arrangement in every class: Louis then Liam then Harry. Liam's always in the middle, and Harry hasn't talked to Louis once at all, despite their close proximity for the entire day.

It's really no surprise when Louis waltzes into Harry's music class later that day, and he figures by now that they probably have the exact same timetables, and he's going to be in the rest of his classes, too.

He wanders over to where Harry's sitting with Josh and the other guys.

"Louis my man!" Sandy reaches him first and pulls him into a jostling hug, nearly making Louis drop his guitar case.

Dan and Josh get up and close him into a rough-looking four person hug that Harry just sits and watches awkwardly. "How you been, man?" Josh pulls away and tucks him under one arm, walking him the rest of the way over to where they had been sitting before.

Louis shrugs and smiles a little. "Yeah okay, what's new with you guys?"

Dan nods over to where their new teacher, Nick, is scribbling frantically into a notebook, his tongue stuck out of his mouth at such an awkward angle that it wouldn't be surprising if it slipped right up his nose any second now. "Finally got a new music teacher, though this ones just as much of a nutter as the last."

Louis chuckles gently and shakes his head, he turns around to find someplace to sit, pausing for a moment when his gaze lands on Harry just sitting there. 

Harry just stares at his music book, unmoving, as he senses Louis sit down next to him. He can feel him looking at him. Oh god. Maybe he should look up, maybe he should say something. What if Louis thinks he's being rude and ignoring him? Oh god oh god what should he-

"Hey Harry."

Harry looks up immediately, probably looking like a stunned bloody goldfish, not for the first time today mind you. He blinks at Louis a few times with raised eyebrows and an open mouth.

Louis blinks back.

"Is that not your name? Shit, sorry I-"

"No no, it is. It is my name, Harry. My name's Harry. Hi Louis."

Louis raises his eyebrows at him.

"Oh. Well, hey."

He stares at him confusedly for a bit longer before turning around to pull his books from his bag, and even though Harry just embarrassed himself more than he could possibly imagine, he just can't stop fucking smiling.

Louis gets up and walks over to Nick (which, sort of, kinda, not really snaps Harry out of his daze. Or it makes him stop staring at the back of Louis' head for a little bit anyway, but now he's staring at the side of Louis' head which isn't really much better... who is he kidding it's so much better just look at his profile and the shadow of his cheekbones oh god).

He can't help but stare at Louis as he talks to their teacher, his hip cocked and his arms crossed over his chest. Even though he's wearing a jumper Harry thinks that he probably has great arms, he just seems like the type (especially if his thighs and arse are anything to go by (but Harry definitely hasn't noticed that anyway)). He's not really trying to hear what they're talking about, but he catches little glimpses like "You want me to call you Nick?" and "With all due respect, sir- yes, I will call you  _sir..."_  and _"_ Because that's what authoritative figures should be called. It shows respect and control, if I call you Nick then you might as well be..."

It sounds like a rather circular conversation.

Louis flicks his fringe and turns around after a moment of discussion that Harry can't hear, and as he gets closer Harry can tell that he looks as though he's on the verge of rolling his eyes straight out of their sockets.

"Ugh."

Harry turns around just in time to see Louis  _actually_ rolling his eyes before he starts unlatching his guitar case (it's too narrow to be an acoustic and too short to be a bass. Harry doubts it would be bass, anyway. Even though he's hardly even known him for a day, Harry knows that Louis has too much creativity for that, too much individuality that he wants to express through chords and strumming and intricate plucking of strings that blister his fingertips eventually. It's probably an electric, even if Harry hadn't picked him for the type.)

Louis must notice Harry staring because he looks up at him from under his fringe, his fingers stilling from where they had been flipping open the latches.

"I wasn't  _ugh_ ing at you." He says after a moment and continues to work his case open. "It's just... he's so fucking pretentious."

Harry raises his eyebrows, apparently his body is now immobile. "Who?"

"That obnoxious hipster that calls himself our teacher." He says with venom in his tone.

"You mean Nick?"

Louis frowns at him, hands stilling again. "I mean Mr Grimshaw."

He flips the lid open to reveal a glossy black electric guitar. Huh.

"But yes, him, he thinks he's so bloody good with his 'Oh, I used to host a radio show on BBC' and 'I taught myself how to play the violin when i was two years old, which makes me more superior than everyone else in the room, yet I still want you to call me by my first name so that I can pretend that I want to be seen as equal.' Fuck."

Harry raises his eyebrows and him and Louis frowns and looks away.

"Okay fine I made up the violin thing. Everything else is true, though."

The rest of the lesson Harry spends watching intently as Louis gets more and more worked up over the little things Nick does. He just finds it so endearing the way that his cheeks are a little pinker than usual, and his eyebrows are in a constant state of being drawn together into a straight line. Harry wants to kiss the wrinkle between them, but that would be weird, even for him.

Louis huffs as he bats his fringe away from his eyes and stomps back over towards Harry and Josh. He's muttering things under his breath by the time he gets back. Things like " _stupid fucking hipster"_  and  _"obnoxious twat"._

Harry watches him as he falls roughly into the chair beside him. Watches how he grapples irritatedly at the seam in his jeans with bitten down fingernails and bruised knuckles, watches as his chest rises and falls more rapidly than usual due to being so worked up over another petty little thing that Nick did. And the truth is, he's just so captivated by the beauty in this boy that he can't bring himself to look away. So he just lets his eyes trace his sharp cheekbones and the curve of his eyelashes because if he's going to be stuck here, staring at this boy, then he might as well make his stay pleasant.

He knows he's staring, which is why it doesn't really come as a surprise when he gets caught. It's not for the first time today, anyway. Or the first time this lesson. Or this half hour.

Louis just eyes him briefly, his eyebrows still knotted together a little and Harry can tell that his teeth are clenched by the way his jaw sticks out a little more than usual.

"He's so  _frustrating_." Louis pinches the bridge of his nose.

"I know." Harry whispers before he can even register what's happening because he doesn't know, not really. He thinks Nick is trendy and cool and can't really empathise with Louis but wants him to think he can, apparently.

"Oh, please." Louis hangs his head in Harry's direction, looking at him with raised eyebrows. "You think Mr Grimshaw is the greatest thing since sliced bread. You practically worship the ground he walks on. You're swooning over him so much that it's painful to watch. You practically-"

"I do  _not."_ Harry interrupts with a frown. Louis counteracts it with a smirk and he doesn't quite really know what to say now. He just looks at Louis for a second.

"Alright fine, I like Nick, I think he's cool. But 'm not  _swooning_  over him."

Louis looks at him for a moment, his expression unreadable, then he shakes his head and looks away. "You're just as irritating as him."

And even though there isn't really any intentional poison behind his words, Harry knows he means it. But for some reason, he can't bring himself to be offended by it.

And it's not because he's got a thing for him or anything. Because he doesn't, really, he's not a prepubescent girl with a crush.

Or so he tells himself, anyway. It doesn't matter that the longer he looks at Louis the harder it is to look away.

It doesn't help much, either, the way his tiny little hands curve out from the sleeves of his jumper when he plays the keyboard and his fingers dance across the black and white keys expertly. His eyes closed behind his glasses and his face scrunched into a distant smile as the notes from the keyboard fill his headphones nestled amongst his tousled hair. Or the next day when he pulls off his glasses and comes into class wearing a denim jacket and he cracks out his electric guitar. He perches on top of the giant amp and even though it makes him look so tiny and foldable compared to its giant mass underneath him, Harry can't help but think that there is something just so godforsaken sexy about his absent plucking of the strings and the little nod of his head as he strums along. And Harry... Harry just about loses it because literally everything about this boy is perfect.

-

Cold, that's the first thing Harry feels when he wakes up on Monday morning. Absolutely freezing fucking cold.

And wet, and- "RISE AND SHINE, CURLY BOY!"

He snaps into a sitting position, all bleary eyed and freezing cold. He can't breathe, he's in the fucking Arctic and nothing makes sense and- and oh... those  _assholes_. Those absolute  _dickwads_.

Louis chucks one final ice cube at his head before he and Zayn run giggling out of the room, high-fiving each other on their way and Harry... Harry isn't quite sure what to do with himself.

He blinks in shock at the open door and then blinks at his lap - there's ice cubes and cold water everywhere, it literally looks like he's taking an ice bath on top of his mattress. Where did they even  _get_ all of this ice from? He looks to the side to see Niall completely undisturbed, sleeping peacefully next to an alarm clock that is blinking four o'clock in the fucking morning.

Once again, those  _asshats._

In his dumbfounded state of paralysis Harry falls back onto his bed, numerous ice cubes slipping down the back of his pants as he does so which makes for quite an uncomfortable experience. Briefly he considers just going back to sleep and dealing with the ice in the morning, but there's a high possibility that this weather has the potential to give him hypothermia or something like that and it's starting to make his arse a bit numb, so it's probably not the best idea.

"For FUCK'S sake, man." Harry grunts out finally and shoves the sopping wet sheets from his sopping wet body, trudging along into the bathroom with a little frown on his half-asleep face.

While Harry is, by all means, thankful that Louis is warming up to his surroundings, he just wishes that he would pick someone else to be the target in which he pulls all of his little pranks.

He could deal with the little things, like confetti in his and Niall's air conditioner, and the life-size cutout of Nicolas Cage's face that he stuck on the back of their toilet door. When he somehow, God knows how, managed to set Harry's ringtone to sexy back by Justin Timberlake and ring him in the middle of assembly on Friday, Harry was kinda pissed, but it was still sort of funny. But now, now he's got him shivering his bits off, taking a shower in the pitch black at 4am on a Monday morning (because Parrish doesn't turn the lights back on until 5), and this is kinda taking it to a whole new level.

Louis is like a toddler, Harry thinks as he pours some shampoo into the palm of his hand. One of those toddlers that  _knows_ how cute they are, so they act like little shits because they know they can get away with it, because who would have the heart to punish such an adorable face?

And it works, too. Because even though Harry knows exactly what Louis' doing, he can't even sum up the ability to stay pissed at him for much longer than it takes for him to rinse the suds out of his hair, because pictures of Louis' soft brown fringe and his little canine teeth that only show when he laughs at Harry's reaction to one of his dumb pranks pop back into his mind.

Fuck Louis Tomlinson, that perfect little asshole.

-

With some poor attempt at self-respect Harry tries half-heartedly to look angry when Louis joins them for breakfast that morning. 

"Morning lads." That blue-eyed little fucker chirps as he sets his orange juice down on the table. Harry's a little offended that he hasn't even noticed his pout yet. It's specially for him and he hasn't even reacted to it.

Asshole.

Except not really. At all.

Most of them mumble back a half-asleep "Morning", except for Niall who just manages a little "mmmmrgnh" from where his face is pressed against the table. Why is he even so tired, it's not like  _he's_  the one that got woken up at 4am by peter pan with ice cubes.

Right. Ice bucket. Angry face, Harry, stop looking so fucking  _fond._

Harry clears his throat, Louis is already looking at him. 

"Thanks for the wakeup call this morning." 

Louis raises his eyebrows and smirks at him like he's just one some unspoken victory of the battle of who was going to be the first to bring it up. "It was my pleasure, Harold." He subtly high-fives Zayn again without breaking Harry's eye contact and winks once before finally looking away.

If Harry was standing up he probably would have fallen over by now. Thank the lord for chairs because these knees are like those of a newborn giraffe right now.

Niall frowns and cracks one eye open. "Wakeup call? What r'ya talkin' about?"

"How you possibly could have managed to sleep through that this morning is beyond my knowledge, Nialler." Louis shakes his head from the other side of the table. "Haz here screamed like a little girl when we decided to kickstart his day with a nice little impromptu ice bath-in-bed."

"Did not." Harry frowns defensively and mumbles under his breath.

Niall looks like everything has suddenly started making sense, like he's just had some great epiphany. "That's why your bed was so wet this morning, Christ, I thought that was sweat."

There's a collective groan of disgust at the table. Harry frowns.

"How on earth would I manage to sweat  _that_ much in my sleep, Niall?!" Harry's not sure whether he's more incredulous or disgusted, so his voice probably sounds like big bird or something. Whatever.

Niall shrugs as best he can with his head on the table. "I dunno man... Who knows what you dream about."

Harry makes eye contact with Zayn across the table, and the look of dumbfounded disgust that they share makes them both explode into laughter.

"You're truly disgusting, Niall." Liam laughs as he pats him on the back. "Why are you so tired, anyway?"

"It's Monday, Liam." Niall says like it's the most obvious thing in the world, maybe it is.

"Well you better wake up before footie tryouts this afternoon," Liam apparently kicks him under the table, if his grunt of disapproval his anything to go by. "Hey Harry, you should totally try out with us as well!"

"Oh, what I... No, I..." Harry scratches his neck awkwardly because, fuck, he's trapped. He's shit at football, really,  _he is shit._ "I'm terrible at football, two left feet and what have you."

"Oh come on, now that last years seniors are gone we have such a good chance to get into the open team for once."

Harry watches Louis glance down into his lap and start to play with his fingers.

"Well, us four anyway, this one's been in the open team since he started at this school." Liam gestures at Louis who winces under everyones gaze.

"Liam." Louis' voice is suddenly so quiet and warning, where did that giddy pixie-like boy from before go?

"Oh c'mon Lou, we all know you're the best, it's-"

"I actually don't know if I'm going to try out at all this year."

Louis cuts in and the table falls silent.

They all blink at each other for a second.

Zayn wraps his arm around Louis' small shoulders and he automatically nuzzles his head into the crook of Zayn's neck.

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to, babe, remember that, okay?"

Louis nods up and down a few times. "Yeah, I know."

Zayn shoots Liam a warning look and mouths a silent "stop" at him. Liam nods knowingly and guiltily goes back to his breakfast.

What the fuck is going on? Harry is so bloody confused it's not even funny anymore. Not even five minutes ago Louis had been smiling and laughing and making jokes, and now suddenly he's close to tears and buried deep into Zayn's collarbones. 

The foot that Harry hadn't even noticed tapping rhythms into his shin has now frozen and retracted back to its own side of the table and he feels so stupidly lost without it there, even though he's survived without it every day for the whole of his life up until only a few minutes ago.

There's just so much more to Louis that Harry doesn't know. So much behind those cerulean eyes that sparkle one minute and look dull and lifeless the next. There has to be some reason for Louis' mood to change so rapidly like that, something that triggers a part inside of him to snap and send his mood tumbling down.

And Harry wants to know what that is. He wants to know every single tiny little detail about Louis as a person, as a whole. He wants to know every small thing that makes Louis tick.

He knows it's going to be hard, getting to know Louis when he's always either so closed off, or so loud and boisterous, but he'll make it happen. He's determined to make Louis talk.


	4. Congratulations, you are a giant hedgehog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Making it onto the football team is a little more than unexpected. A party ensues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so so SO sorry about how terribly long it has taken me to update. I am an awful human being, I know, if I could make it up to you then I would, but sadly this chapter will have to suffice. As always, comments/feedback/kudos are highly appreciated. Enjoy :) xx

Harry is so, completely and utterly out of his depth.

He can't do this, he's a badminton-playing, cupcake-baking, curly haired Joy Division fan from Holmes Chapel, football is 100% not his forte. 

He loves footy, sure, he's a massive Man U fan and he enjoys a game of Fifa as much as the next teenage boy, but when it comes to the actual, physical playing of the game, well...

If he's being completely honest with himself he's not entirely too sure how he ended up trying out in the first place, but it probably has something to do with Niall's consistent nagging or Liam's inconspicuous puppy dog eyes every time Harry makes a dismissive comment about having two left feet, or the foot-eye coordination (is that even a thing?) of a baby giraffe.

The thing is, Harry figures, what does he have to lose? He's new at this school and trying out for the team would be a great way to meet a few more people, plus all of the friends he's already made are trying out, anyway, and although he refuses to admit it to himself, he doesn't want to feel like he's being left out of something that they do.

There's no denying the fact that he's rubbish at footy, so he's fully prepared to trip over his feet, fall in a pile of mud and probably kick the ball in the complete wrong direction by complete accident. He's prepared to get the apologetic I'm-sorry-you-didn't-make-it-smile from the coach as the last name is read off the list of those who met the cut. What he isn't prepared for, however, is actually making the team.

It's a mess, or more appropriately, he's a mess, but that's not really anything out of the ordinary. 

He's a flailing pile of too-long limbs and uncoordinated, pigeon-toed feet that traipses around on the field and probably only comes in contact with the ball once throughout the entire duration of the hour-long tryouts. Yet somehow, by the power of the football Gods or something else, he makes the team.

The surprise is evident on not only Harry's but the rest of the boys' faces as well, especially when he's chosen over Stan and Chris who have been playing for years.

He briefly considers asking the coach if there's been some kind of mix-up, if he's confused Harry with someone else, but it's kind of hard to misplace Harry's signature mop of curls, no matter how large a crowd of people he's standing in. Maybe it was the usual 'give-the-new-kid-a-chance' technique. Being new is a curse, really.

"Styles." The coach calls out as the boys all start to turn back to the changing rooms in various states of excitement and accomplishment. He turns around and he's being signalled over. 'Great,' Harry thinks, 'this is the part where he says: "Oh I'm sorry we've made a mistake, we meant to call Stan Lucas, not Harry Styles, but you can dress up as the mascot instead. Congratulations, you are a giant hedgehog."' Harry hangs his head as he walks, he thinks he'd probably do a better job of dressing up as a giant hedgehog than actually being on the team anyway, so maybe it's for the best. He offers a small smile as he approaches, "Is there something wrong, Mr Higgins?"

The stout man looks at him for a moment with a tight-lipped smile before clapping him on the shoulder and pausing after an intake of breath. 

"You're probably wondering how you made the team."

Harry's a bit taken aback. Yeah, he sure as hell is wondering how the team, but he didn't expect his coach to actually acknowledge the fact.

"Um, yeah, actually, I guess I am." Harry wraps his right thumb and index finger around his left wrist. "I was a mess out there."

Mr Higgins laughs, shaking his head. "That's what I love about you, kid." He ruffles Harry's hair. "The other lads can get so competitive and take it way too seriously, they end up losing sight of the whole point of the game: teamwork. But you, even though you run into people and kick the ball the wrong way and break into uncontrollable laughter halfway through the game, you're smiling the whole bloody - excuse my language - time. And I think the other boys could really use someone like you on the team."

Harry doesn't realise that his mouth is hanging open in surprise until a bit of drool tempts to spill over his lips. He swallows quickly, blinking his eyes back to coherence.

"So, you put me on the team so the other boys can laugh at how much I suck?"

"Of course not, lad. I put you on the team because you have fun while you're playing, and that's really what the whole thing should be about, and sometimes the other boys need to be reminded that."

Harry considers this for a moment, nodding slowly.

"Okay, well. Thanks, I think, thank you." He gives him a small smile.

"My pleasure, now I better let you go and shower, good luck for the season, lad."

He dismisses him with a little salute and Harry starts walking away, still a little shell-shocked when Niall comes bounding up behind him only moments later.

"Congrats, Haz." He beams and claps him on the back as they make their way towards the locker room. "Making the team is a pretty big deal, your life can only go up from here, mate, so much excitement coming your way."

Harry makes a mock-offended face.

"Are you suggesting that my life up until this point has been anything but one never-ending roller coaster of excitement, Niall?"

Niall seems to consider this for a moment.

"Well, no, but... I mean how fun can Cheshire really be?"

He shrugs, he has a point. "You have a point."

Liam takes this opportunity to run up to them, stopping in front of them and jogging backwards as they walk.

"Party's at Zayn's tonight." He says completely casually and with an air of excitement, as if they should have every idea as to what he's talking about. "Come at eight, and bring your own booze." He turns and starts running facing the right way, before shouting over his shoulder as an afterthought "And weed!" 

With a sly wink and a wave of Liam's hand, he's running off the field, leaving Niall squirming with excitement and Harry nothing short of bewildered.

Harry slows down a bit as he waits for Niall to explain, he doesn't. 

"Niall," he begins innocently, "what, uh... What party?"

Niall stops square in his tracks and Harry runs straight into his back, having lagged behind in his moment of confusion. Niall turns around slowly with a look of, what can only be described as, complete shock, mixed with a devious grin on his face.

"My god." He whispers under his breath, his eyes sparkling terrifyingly with mischief.

Harry scratches his left heel with his right toe, awkward. "What?"

Niall shakes his head. "You have no idea what's coming."

Harry frowns and fidgets with the hem of his jersey.

"No idea at all."

"No, I don't, so uh, would you care to explain?"

Niall's eyes are wider than Harry thinks is humanly possible, and he shakes his head in slow disbelief. "Zayn and Lou's legendary footy party. Oh my god, you have no bloody clue."

"Niall will you-"

"Not the slightest idea of what-"

"Okay I get it! Will you quit being so weird and just tell me what the hell this is all about?" Harry pouts and crosses his arms, probably losing any air of intimidation that might have been present in his voice.

Niall just stares at him for a moment, grinning before he cracks a laugh that echoes through the entire stadium as he throws his head back.

"Oh man," he claps a hand on Harry's back and continues walking, "okay well, every year Louis and Zayn throw a huge celebratory party for the guys that make it into the footy team."

Right, he's following so far.

"But this isn't just a party, dude, this is like, a party, yeah? Last year, Zayn got so drunk that he woke up on the Principal's desk wearing the head of the school mascot costume, his tube socks, and absolutely nothing else. To this day no one has any idea how he got there."

Harry raises his eyebrows. It's not like he's never drank before, he's been to plenty of parties in his home town, he knows what it's like to party. It's just, he's never really, strictly speaking, been drunk. Or high. Or even tried weed. Or a cigarette. He briefly remembers the half-sarcastic comment he made to his parents about smoking weed with strange boys when they sent him away to boarding school. He meant it as a joke, as a desperate attempt to change his parents' minds, but he never really considered the fact that it might actually happen. 

"How do you, like, get stuff though? Like, for the party I mean?"

"You mean the grog?"

Harry nods sheepishly.

Niall grins at him in disbelief before shaking his head.

"Oh Haz, we've so much to teach you."

-

Four hours, two juice cartons filled with vodka and a very drunk game of musical statues later, Harry finds himself, Zayn's arm slung around his shoulders, chatting to a bunch of guys he can't quite remember the names of.

He's swaying on his feet a little, or a lot; he's certain this is the most intoxicated he has ever been, and when he looks up at Zayn, a bottle of water is thrust into his face.

"Drink this, yeah?" Zayn looks concerned. Zayn never looks concerned. "You need to sober up a little, Haz. You feeling okay?"

Harry just nods and mouthes at the pop top on the bottle. He remembers what Niall said about Zayn's antics during this party last year and can't help but realise his decidedly less intoxicated state right now. He wonders is Zayn's given up drinking because of that night, he also wonders if Zayn's taken it upon himself to not drink tonight so that he could look after Harry. He sips half-heartedly at the water in an attempt to make Zayn less concerned and hopefully un-furrow his brow - Harry's not sure his conscience would be able to handle living with knowledge that he gave Zayn Malik's flawless skin wrinkles.

He lowers the bottle from his mouth and catches the end of a sentence that one of the nameless boys he's with is saying - something about pulling a bird at a Justin Bieber concert last month - and thinks that this conversation really isn't something he's suited to. Especially not in his current state.

"'m gonna go sit down for a bit, m'kay." Harry slurs and ducks out from under Zayn's arm, waving behind him when he hears something about finishing his water and getting something substantial to eat to absorb the alcohol in his system.

Seconds later Harry is tumbling down onto Zayn's bed, lazy and inebriated, and for a moment he just lays there, staring up at the roof with his feet dangling off the end.

He's alone in the crowded room, for the time being, and everything is spinning as music blares in his ears and a few boys are dancing while there's a very loud game of gay chicken happening on the bed directly across from him, and he just wants something to ground him right now. To keep him in one place and remind him that solid ground is still a thing, and that life outside blurriness and slurred thoughts still exists.

So when a warm hand grasps his forearm gently and lifts it away from his body, pulling him away form the bed carefully, Harry follows without question.

When he finally comes to and his vision is slightly clearer again, he's in Zayn's bathroom. Sat in the bathtub to be more exact.

Harry rubs at his eyes and glances around the room, searching for the warm hand that had pulled him in here in the first place.

"Hey there party rocker."

Louis is sat in the other end of the bath, his head resting in his palm and a very sated smile on his face. Even in his own state, Harry can see the darkness in Louis' eyes, he can see the way his face seems to be lit with desire in a way that makes Harry's stomach flutter. He just pins it down to Louis be equally as drunk as he is.

At least, he hopes he is, because Harry's bound to do something to embarrass himself and it would make things a lot easier if Louis was as unlikely to remember this in the morning as Harry.

He nudges Louis' calf with his toe.

"Dun be mean, never been... drunk b'fore." He closes his eyes and frowns, his head lolling to the left a little.

"Never would have guessed." Louis teases as he rocks forwards onto his knees, grasping each of Harry's calves as he does so with a little smirk on his face.

He fumbles around in his back pocket for a bit before pulling out a baggy and tossing it at Harry. It hits him directly in between the eyes and he frowns as he opens his eyelids one at a time, searching for the intruding object that just landed in his lap, as Louis rises from the tub and rummages around in the cupboard under the sink.

It takes Louis about as long to find what he's looking for as it does for Harry to decide that, yes, this is definitely weed.

Louis climbs back into the bath, bong in one hand and a lighter in the other, and gives Harry a questioning smirk and raise of his eyebrows.

Harry examines the bag in his palm for a moment, rolling it over and opening it to smell the substance inside. He glances up at Louis. "'ve never smoked 'fore either."

Louis rolls his eyes and laughs a little. "If you've never been drunk did you really expect me to think you'd been high before?" and maybe he isn't as drunk as Harry thought he was. Maybe Harry just said that out loud, he's still not sure.

"Will Zayn mind if you smoke in his room?"

Louis looks at him for a second, a bit of a dumbfounded expression mixed with a smirk. "This is my room, too, Harry."

"Oh, I... It is too." Harry frowns, he forgot about that bit.

"Besides, Zayn smokes cigarettes like a fucking chimney, I'm sure he can handle a bit of weed in his bathroom."

They're both silent for a little bit, until Louis looks up at him once more.

"You don't have to if you don't want," Louis says as he packs the little brown-green flakes into the tube that's sticking out from the bottom, "just thought you might like to be, I dunno," he looks up at Harry through his eyelashes, a smirk gracing his features, "corrupted a little bit."

Harry watches intently as he holds the opening up to his mouth and sets the dope alight. His eyes are squinted slightly and there's a little crease of concentration in between his eyebrows as he smokes it with practiced ease. He doesn't let out a single cough as he pulls his finger away from the opening and breathes the smoke deep into his lungs, closing his eyes in a moment of bliss.

He holds it in for a moment and Harry's transfixed by the way he tilts his head back, eyes shut, as he blows the smoke into the air above his head, the golden skin on his neck exposed and his jaw line casting shadows along the column of his throat.

He knows he's staring. Even if he couldn't tell by himself, in the state that he's in, the smirk that Louis gives him when he opens his eyes is enough to let on how fucking thirsty Harry must look right now.

Louis picks up the bong and holds it out to Harry, a questioning look on his face.

Maybe it's the alcohol in his system making his mind foggy, or maybe he's just blinded by the sheer beauty of this blue-eyed boy sitting in front of him, but either way, Harry kinda really wants to do this.

Just one small problem. He has no idea what the fuck he's doing.

He clears his throat. "I d'nno how."

Louis chuckles. "Relax, I'll do it all for you."

He watches the boy's little golden hands as they scoop up more bud from the packet and press it down into the tube, his heart beating faster by the second with nerves or excitement or something else, he's not sure.

Suddenly Louis is shuffling forward until he's between Harry's legs, his own legs bent on either side of Harry's hips, and his heart practically stops altogether. He's all too aware of every point where they're touching, and in a moment of panic he flails his hands around a bit before settling them down on Louis' thighs. He can feel the warmth of Louis' own body pressing through the fabric of his jeans and underneath the palms of his hands, and it feels like every body part that is in contact with the boy in front of him has been set on fire, or like there's glitter oozing out of his skin, or some other cliche like that.

"Put your mouth on this bit like this, here." He holds it up to Harry's face and he does as he's instructed. "Make sure no air can get it. He flicks the lighter and holds it up to the bud, now suck in, but don't inhale until I say."

Harry starts sucking and the water starts to bubble as the chamber fills with smoke, but he's not watching, his eyes are completely trained on the concentrated expression knitted across Louis' features as he helps Harry pull the bong.

Somehow he makes this a lot less scary, a lot less intimidating just by being here right in front of him, touching their bodies together effortlessly. His baby blue eyes are fixed on Harry's lips, pursed inside the opening of the tube, and his face twists into a concentrated expression as he watches the smoke build up inside the tube.

He looks up for a second and they make eye contact. Harry still sucking in and Louis still holding the bong up to Harry's mouth. Time seems to slow down as Louis releases his finger and removes the lighter. "Now breathe in." He whispers slowly, and he does.

Harry breathes the smoke into his lungs, his eyes still linked with Louis'. 

It burns instantly, and almost straight away he's puffing back out, coughing and spluttering as he tries to expel it from his body before he fucking chokes to death.

He didn't really know what he was expecting. That the smoke would glide into his body like liquid gold and lift him up with an instant high, and that he and Louis would float away on a cloud and make out until their lips hurt, probably, but none of that happens. Not even close, and his chest feels like it's being ripped into thousands of pieces from the inside out.

Louis smirks dazedly at him, his eyelids heavy as the effects of the drug start to take over his body. He leans forward as Harry's coughing slows to a wheezy breathing, his lidded eyes dropping to Harry's lips.

The boy hovers there for a second, not moving, just breathing only millimetres away from Harry's own lips, and he wants nothing more than to close the gap between them, to crash their lips together in a mess of teeth and booze and weed, but he's not sure how Louis will react, not sure if that's allowed. So he just sits there with his hands on Louis' thighs, dazed and nervous. His heart is beating a thousand times a minute as Louis' open mouth splits into a lazy, devious grin.

"Well, how was it then?" His voice is wrecked and husky from the smoke, and Louis is still just in front of him, so Harry doesn't mis the way his eyes dart down to the bob of his adam's apple as he swallows thickly before he replies.

He tries for "Painful." but only manages to get out half of a syllable before his throat is catching again and he breaks out into another fit of coughs and splutters.

Louis smirks and pulls away at that, standing up to get him a some water from the bathroom sink. Harry pretends that he doesn't instantly miss the body warmth pressing into him.

He drinks it gratefully, not once taking his eyes off Louis from over the rim of the cup, as he resumes his place at the other side of the bath. He sets the drink down on the tiles, neither of them speak.

Harry absently remembers reading somewhere that some people can't get high the first time they smoke.

He definitely isn't one of those people. It isn't long before it starts to hit him, and he stares over at Louis for a minute. All of his movements are slowed down, the soft flutter of his eyelashes as he blinks, the gentle rise and fall of his chest, the finger tracing nonsensical patterns into the white porcelain. Harry wonders how Louis can look even more beautiful like this, dazed and dark-eyed and stuffed into the other end of a bathtub. It's not fair, he thinks, that one boy can be so beautiful and so intriguing, despite being a little shit a lot of the time.

Harry frowns. "I don't mean to sound rude, but, isn't this a football party?"

Louis raises his eyebrows nonchalantly. "What's your point?"

"Um," he frowns again, "well, you're not in the team, are you? It's just, you didn't try out, I..." he lets himself trail off.

Louis shrugs and lets out a sigh.

"It's my dorm."

This is true, for the second time that night Harry forgot about the whole Zayn and Louis being roomies situation.

"Besides," he scratches at his fringe absently, "I am on the team."

Harry's forehead feels weird, he thinks he just raised his eyebrows and frowned at the same time. "You are?"

Everything seems about ten times slower than it is normally, and Harry's usually slow drawl is impossibly slower, smoother than before.

Louis nods with a little tight lipped half-smile, watching his fingers dance across the edge of the bath. "Coach is forcing me to join."

He gives himself a moment to process this, frowning slightly as his eyes follow Louis' fingers. "Whaddya mean... forcing you?"

Louis heaves another sigh and his fingers disappear behind the sleeves of his jumper, "Says, it'll be best for me. Don't worry about it Harry, it's way too complicated to get into."

Harry just watches him for a moment, playing with the loose grey threads, and lets that last sentence repeat itself in his head.

"But I am worrying about it."

Maybe he shouldn't have said it, maybe he didn't have permission to, but he's simultaneously drunk and high, and he's pretty sure that even if he was 100% sober, his mind would be clouded from other things that are pretty hard to ignore when they are seated right in front of you. And besides, he has every right to care about Louis just as much as his other friends do, right? But by the time the words have rolled off his tongue, it's too late to worry about it anyway.

Louis smiles at him a little, his eyes searching Harry's face.

"Maybe I'll tell you one day. But yeah, I'm on the team now."

Harry doesn't really know what to say, so he settles for. "Good," and then "I'm really happy for you." as an afterthought.

Louis chuckles at that and reaches for the bong and what's left inside the baggy, clearly eager to change the subject, and packs it up until there's none left.

He pulls it into his throat flawlessly, breathing it deep into his lungs and opening his eyes to look at Harry once it's all been inhaled.

He surges forward suddenly, and for a moment Harry thinks he's finally going to kiss him. His eyelids flutter as he considers closing them, just in case, but Louis stops just before Harry's slightly open lips and tilts his head to the side.

Harry sucks in a shaky breath, and just as he does so, Louis blows the smoke directly into his mouth.

He raises a finger to Harry's lips and closes them softly, and Harry breathes the smoke down into his chest slowly as so not to make himself cough, and it's a lot easier than last time. When Louis pulls back a little, Harry exhales and the smoke falls all around them, giving the bathroom an eerie feel. Louis' bright blue eyes contrast against the smoke so beautifully that Harry thinks they could be make out of emeralds, or little droplets of the ocean. He knows that's probably the weed talking, but god damn it Louis is just so pretty.

He wants nothing more than to lean forward and kiss all over this boy's face - his heavy eyelids, his little button nose, his sharp cheekbones or his soft, pink lips. But he can't, not yet, not when there's still so much that he wants to find out about this boy.

He wants to know Louis before he knows his body, before he knows the softness of his thin lips. He's worth that much, Harry thinks, he's worth a thousand times more than that, even. He's known him for such a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things, but already Harry can tell how incredibly complex Louis is.

There's just so much to him, his little quirks and traits and what makes him tick, he has such a densely layered personality, and Harry wants nothing more than to become acquainted with each and every one of those layers.

In that moment Niall takes it upon himself to burst into the room, cheeks flushed bright red and his fringe stuck to his forehead with sweat.

Harry only becomes aware of how dark it is in the bathroom until the door is crashing open and light is streaming in along with a few muffled shouts coming from the main room of Zayn and Louis' dorm. He can tell a lot of people have left already as the party starts to dissipate into the early hours of the morning, but there's still a few stragglers that will probably still be there in the morning.

"Hazzaaaaaaa my man," Niall slurs as he sways about on the spot "I've been lookin' all over for ya!" He spots Louis in the tub with him, and tries unsuccessfully to hide a smile.

"I hate ta break up this little, uh, private party ya got goin on 'ere, but it's, ahhhh..." he squints at his watch for longer than strictly necessary, "2am, and, 'm headin' back to our room now so, you should prob'ly join meh, don't want ya walkin' home by yourself when ya still don't know your way 'round this place." He bounces on the balls of his feet and clutches at the door handle for support. Harry thinks he could be even more wasted than he is.

Harry blinks at him for a moment before he finally realises that he's finished talking.

"Huh? Oh, I mean, yeah, uh, sure, I'm... I'm coming."

It takes him even longer to actually stand up and get out of the bath, it feels like there's cotton wool inside his brain, and he turns around and looks down at Louis from the other side of the bath.

He hesitates for a moment, unsure of appropriate etiquette to end a little meeting like this.

He settles for a little wave and receives a wink in return.

"G'night Lou." He turns and uncoordinatedly shuffles his way towards Niall.

"Sleep tight," Louis calls out after him, "don't let the bed bugs bite."


	5. Emotional connection to converse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry wakes at the crack of dawn with a splitting headache and eggshell in his hair. His shoes are nowhere to be found...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really have nothing to say about this, this chapter is kind of slow. Yet again I'm sorry for taking ages to update, and please let me know if it is or isn't completely shitty. I have so much love for everyone that reads even a bit of this.

The sun pouring in through the window when Harry re-gains consciousness the next morning proves his instant suspicion that it is an unacceptably early hour. His attempt to check the clock is cut short from the pain in his head, like a power drill driving through his skull and into his brain. A sideward glance at the clock on the bedside table shows orange digits blinking 5:06 AM.

It's 5am. On a tuesday morning and three and a half hours until he has to be in class. This is not acceptable.

He manages to crack an eye open to peer at Niall from across the room. He's still fast asleep and sprawled out completely and utterly naked on his back, soft little snores escaping his open mouth. Harry takes this as a sign that he can sleep for at least a little bit longer, so he rolls over and pulls the sheets up to his chin. A satisfied smile spreads across his face. He is a warm burrito. Nothing can reach him here.

Nonsensical thoughts and impossible scenarios play on repeat in his head. Everything and nothing both at the same time. Last night seems like a fantasy, one of the hundreds of dreams that he experienced and forgot only a few hours ago, but he knows it really happened.

His recollection is pretty limited, which isn't really all that surprising, but there are some small snippets that he absently remembers from under his bed sheets.

A plastic water bottle filled with Niall's infamous milky-white liquid cheekily nicknamed "Ambrosia", which suspiciously had both the smell and taste of milk mixed with cheap vodka. (He also remembers drinking the better part of it, which, well. Explains the headache.)

A very drunk, very sloppy game of musical statues that was more fun than it should have been, which the alcohol can be thanked for. The memory of being eliminated on the first round is hinting at the back of Harry's mind which isn't really all that surprising, standing still on his own two feet proves a hard enough feat for Harry even while sober.

There's also shouting, and an intense, animated game of gay chicken that may or may not have ended in Zayn and Liam making out a little too passionately, but that's another story.

Tiny hands on his forearms, their fingers digging in ever so slightly and leaving little red marks when they pull away. The cool porcelain of a bathtub pressing against his skin, cooling him down from the flush of alcohol through his blood and the amount of bodies in such a small space. The weight of someone else's thighs pressed against his own, making his skin crawl.

And there's Louis.

Baby blue eyes with more of a resemblance to deep oceans in the dim light of the bathroom, studying Harry's mouth before trailing back up to his eyes again. Strands of soft brown hair falling in his eyes, never staying put. Thin, cherry blossom lips barely an inch away from his, quivering into a smile and testing Harry's self control, just begging to be kissed. But they can't, no, that's not allowed.

Harry refuses to let his body stiffen at the though, yet his breathing still becomes shorter and shallower against his will.

It's stupid, really, that he even feels like this. Just because they smoked together once, doesn't mean that they are now forever indebted to each other. There's no invisible threads tying them together, no magical bond that can't be seen but can be felt.

Lying there thinking about a boy who probably doesn't even remember him feels... well, dumb. A quick shake of his head clears Harry's mind of any dangerous thoughts. It is five in the morning after all. He should be in the same state as Niall, sleeping, not filling up his mind with fantasies involving the jut of Louis' cheekbones or the curve of his sun-kissed cupid's bow.

It's impossible to remove him from his mind completely, so attempting sleep is Harry's most appealing option right now. He flops onto his back and slides his hands under the pillow, warming them up as he waits for sleep to engulf him once more, the little wheezing noises of Niall's snores more comforting than annoying.

He lies there for a moment, just staring at the back of his own eyelids. He's a stubborn little shit, Harry is, because he refuses to open his eyes. The thing is, though, he knows that this is pointless. There's no way in hell he's going to be able to go back to sleep now, once he's up, he's up for good, it's always been that way for Harry even since he was little. Especially on days like Christmas or his birthday, he'd wake up at six in the morning and have to jump on his mum's bed until she woke up. He thinks that, in this situation, it wouldn't be wrong to compare Louis to Christmas.

With an exasperated sigh he throws the blankets off him and spins around until he's sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at Niall with a glare intense enough to burn through his skin. It's only now that Harry realises that he, too, is completely naked, which... well, okay, there's that.

He stands up after a hesitant second and attempts to locate the clothes that he (is at least partially sure that) he came home in last night.

There's a pair of now almost 99% mud covered socks on the floor by the foot of his bed, and little muddy footprints on the hardwood floor leading over to where they had been discarded. A pile of what seems to be both his and Niall's clothes mixed together sits just inside the door.

His trousers are in there, he notices after a moment of sifting through the mound, as are his pants, jacket and t-shirt. But his bloody shoes are nowhere to be found.

There isn't really an endless possibility of places that they could be, it's unlikely that they are anywhere else inside the dormitory.

He peeks his head outside the door of their room (cupping his privates in his hand just incase. It  _is_  six am but you never know who could be lurking in the halls at any time of day), just to check if he had drunkenly kicked them off before coming inside, as to not bring any mud into their room. But of-fucking-course they're not there.

The only liable explanation is that he lost them in transit from one room to the next in the middle of the night. Which explains the mud on his socks and the footprints that he is now going to have to scrub off the floor. Walking around 200m across the campus on wet grass at night without shoes on was admittedly not the best idea on Harry's part.

Under the current circumstances - it being five in the morning on a Tuesday, freezing cold outside and Harry standing butt naked (with part of an eggshell stuck in his hair, he notices as he removes it carefully) in the middle of his room - he should really just forget about his shoes, go and find them some other time, put "Lost Shoes" posters up around the school, even. And the thing is, if it were any other pair of shoes, then he probably would.

But it's not any other pair of shoes, and Harry might be weird, but he has like... a strange sort of connection towards these shoes.

They aren't even anything special, really. Just old, battered up white converse that he wears almost everywhere. And maybe it's because of the fact that he wears them all the time, but Harry just  _likes_ them, a lot. It's really just that simple.  _The shoes_  are just simple, too. They're casual, they can be dressed up, they go with everything... and Harry just really wants them back.

So he throws on his same clothes from last night, it's five in the morning and unlikely that he will see anyone else on campus but it's probably not acceptable to go naked. He stuffs his feet into a pair of trainers and yanks the door open with a newfound sense of urgency, suddenly in a hurry and mildly pissed off for no apparent reason.

Immediately after stepping outside, three things become very clear to Harry.

One: It's way too cold for this and he should have worn a proper coat.

Two: He didn't bring his key with him and he's fairly sure the door is locked, so unless Niall is awake by the time he gets home then he's going to be locked out until he finally awakes from the dead.

Three: He actually has no idea where he's headed right now.

The logical thing to do in this situation would probably be to retrace his steps, because the shoes are bound to be lying somewhere on the path of his journey from Zayn's dorm to his own. But there's one small yet fatal flaw in this plan, and that is that Harry cannot remember said journey at all, not even one tiny bit.

Listening to his upper classmen in Cheshire brag about how spectacularly drunk they got on the weekends always seemed so unrealistic. Saying that they were so completely smashed that they couldn't remember a thing just sounded like a fabricated story to make them sound more interesting, to give them a funny story to tell.

Harry owes them an apology now, though. After experiencing it first hand, he completely takes back every roll of his eyes or shake of his head, every silent judgement he made about any of them.

Zayn and Louis' dorm is probably the best place to start, he decides as he makes his way across campus already on the journey to their room as if by default. The frozen dew on the grass crunches underneath his feet and feels like the tangible form of the word morning.

-

Standing in front of Zayn and Louis' dorm at 5:17 in the morning suddenly feels like the most ridiculous thing Harry's ever done. Which is probably more than a bit of an exaggeration, in his whole life leading up to this point he's definitely made worse decisions than trying to find his shoes at five in the morning. Although, the sun is barely up yet, and the two boys in the room he's standing in front of are undoubtedly going to be asleep still because they aren't bloody insane like Harry.

The chances of him getting his shoes back now are suddenly looking very slim.

He kind of just stands there, staring at the door for a minute, contemplating life and how many times this exact situation has happened to other Harry's or other people on the opposite side of the world, if ever.

It's an impulsive decision that even Harry doesn't expect until his fist is lifting up and heading toward the door.

It hesitates unwillingly in the air for a brief second, but with an internal debate Harry forces himself to knock. Just a gentle little tap of the wood as not to wake them, but loud enough for them to hear if they were actually awake.

Harry doesn't move a single finger or make a single noise as he desperately strains to hear any form of movement or voice from inside the room. He doesn't notice that he's standing on his tiptoes until a breeze blows from an open window somewhere down the hall, making him teeter slightly and rock back down onto his heels as goosebumps begin to scatter across his skin.

Several moments pass by without any results, and Harry is still yet to be accompanied in the hallway

The long sigh that escapes his lips somehow echoes through the empty hallway as he tries to come up with some great idea of what to do next. His eyes feel small as he rubs at them, giving hints of the inescapable tiredness that is yet to come.

The shiny silver of the door handle catches his eyes, and they linger there for a long while. He wonders how far over the line he would be crossing if he were to walk into the room uninvited while both of the lads were still asleep. He checks his watch again, it's 5:24. Seven minutes have passed. Seven minutes that the hallway has been Harry's temporary point of refuge from the cold, even though it's not that much warmer in here. Regardless of that fact, walking across the school at 5am in the freezing cold and standing outside his mates' room for seven minutes is a self-appointed considerable amount of effort for a Tuesday. An amount of effort that deserves some sort of compensation, like his shoes, maybe.

Before he can change his mind, Harry's hand is landing on the door handle and twisting and... and it's open.

Well fuck, he hadn't expected that to happen.

It kind of shocks him and Harry's sort of taken aback, he hadn't even considered the door actually being  _open_  as being a legitimate possibility, so he isn't exactly prepared for this outcome.

He sort of glances around the halls for a bit, his hand still on the handle and the door open just slightly, leaking light into the room. Stepping inside seems ridiculous, and Harry's not sure if he really wants to actually take that risk.

What could be the worst that could happen? They wake up, get angry at him a bit and tell him to get out, probably. Nothing Harry can't handle, especially if it means getting his shoes back.

Eventually the decision of pushing the door open and stepping inside becomes a reality, the hinges creaking ever so slightly as he does so.

Immediately upon entering, Harry is confronted by an assorted collection of empty alcohol bottles strewn about on all of the furniture and floor. The room is swimming in a murky grey shadow, the closed curtains hanging heavy against the window.

Toilet paper hangs limp from all of the shelves and the ceiling fan like cheap streamers decorating the room. Someone has taken it upon themselves to write "TWAT" on the wall in enormous letters sprayed with silly-string, followed by a smiley face.

It's pretty overwhelming really, even in the dark, just how destroyed their room is. It will be at least the weekend before all of this gets cleaned up, Harry's sure of that, he briefly even considers offering to help, but, well, that's probably a decision best made when he's had at least a couple more hours of sleep.

He side-steps into the room, trying not to open the door too wide and let too much light in, gently clicking it shut behind him.

A few heavy blinks later and Harry's eyes finally adjust to the darkness. Zayn is asleep on his side, facing the wall with his hands tucked under the pillow. Harry tiptoes to the wall opposite the foot of his bed, trying not to make a sound.

Locating his shoes within this room full of trash is going to be harder than Harry thought, especially in the darkness. He shuffles a few bags and various articles of clothing around in a sorry attempt to find them.

He's absently considering just giving up, yet still he turns around slowly to start searching on the other side of the room, his weight balanced on his toes as he does so.

He gives this side of the room a quick once over before making any sort of action to move over there. It doesn't seem to be quite as destroyed as Zayn's half, there's no silly-string graffiti on the wall, but toilet paper and glass bottles and cans still decorate every visible surface. The drawers of the bedside table are open and some of the contents have spilled onto the edge of Louis' bed and... oh? Louis isn't in bed?

There's no one in the bathroom. The door is open and the lights are off, so he's not having a shower, and Harry can't hear anyone moving around in there. Harry blinks confusedly a couple of times, his head cocked slightly to the side. Maybe... maybe he's gone for a run? Or something... He might have just wanted some fresh air or he could be-

"Shit!"

Harry's heart feels like it's about to jump out of his throat when he sees him. He nearly jumps fucking right out of his skin as he smacks his hands over his mouth

He quickly glances at Zayn to make sure his exclaimed profanity didn't wake him up, but the boy doesn't seem to have been disturbed at all.

Harry whips his head back around to the edge of Louis' bed, his hands still clamped tightly over his mouth, eyes as wide as saucers nearly bulging out of his head.

The boy looks so small. Perched on the floor at the foot of his bed, his back resting against the frame and his knees drawn into his chest. He's the picture of tiny, foldable.

He's just... sitting there, unmoving. He's not on his phone, he isn't reading, not doing homework or anything. Just staring at the wall, his eyes glazed over and unblinking, a completely blank look on his face. Harry's presence is completely unknown to him, even his shout hasn't disturbed him at all.

Tattered at the hems, his oversized sweater hangs loose on his shoulders, his hands tucked snugly into the opposite sleeves where they rest in his lap.

Ever so slowly, Harry lowers his hands from his mouth, pretending not to notice how much they are shaking because really, it's just stupid, he has no need to be scared right now. Confused, probably, and maybe even a bit concerned, but definitely not scared.

Just standing here staring at Louis, Harry feels stupid and embarrassed. He knows he's being creepy, but what is he even supposed to do? What  _does_  one do in a situation like this? Should he try and talk to him? Should he just leave and act like he was never even here?

Hopelessly glancing around the room, there's nothing to provide him with any sort of help or answer. He follows the line of Louis' vision with his own eyes to try and get any sort of help at all, but the wall is just completely blank.

It's an impulsive decision, what he does next, and maybe not the best possible one he could've made, but nonetheless, Harry clears his throat.

"...Louis?"

It comes out as barely even a whisper, something that probably wouldn't have even been loud enough for the boy to hear if he was completely coherent.

He takes one shaky step forward and tries again. "L-Louis?"

Nothing. Not even a gentle hum of insects outside.

He shuffles forward just a slight bit more, until he's about two metres away from the boy, and takes one final step.

The moment his foot hits the floor, the hardwood creaks beneath him and immediately Louis' head is snapping up to face him and he is blinking the blurriness from his eyes. Harry jumps back in shock, stumbling over a full roll of toilet paper and Louis is on his feet straight away, ripping his hands out of his sleeves and pulling them back down to hang just past his fingers, completely hidden. 

"What the hell are you-" Louis tries to talk, but his voice is husky and cracks as he speaks. He gives a little cough into his fist, still looking up with a crumpled forehead and never breaking eye contact with Harry. He clears his throat finally, his eyes questioning as he opens his mouth to speak again.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Harry cuts him off before he can start. "I was just looking for my shoes. I think I left them here last night and the door was open so I just came in and then I saw you and I didn't know if you were okay I didn't know if I should do something or should I just leave but I don't know I just I'm sorry Louis okay I'll go I'm sorry I'll leave I'll just leave."

His back hits the door and it's only then that he realises he's been walking backwards throughout his ramble. He whips around, frantically trying to locate the handle, he doesn't think he's even capable of making eye contact with Louis right now.

"What... Wait, Harry."

He pauses, wincing. This is it. This is the moment that Louis calls him out on being so fucking weird and creepy, walking into a room of sleeping boys and leaving before they even know he was in there. He leaves his hand on the doorknob as he turns around to look at Louis' feet with a face full of pure embarrassment. 

Louis' got his arms crossed and his brow is furrowed as he glares at him.

"You can't just walk into someone else's dorm room at bloody five in the morning, Harry. That's borderline trespassing... and just plain creepy."

"I know Louis, I'm sorry I, I just wanted to find my shoes, that's all, and the door was open so I just came in, it was stupid, I know." He swallows and wipes the palm of his left hand on his trousers, glancing up at him a few times before returning to the safety of his socked feet.

Louis just looks at him for a moment and then to the door beside him, his eyebrows still pulled together and his mouth in a tight line. Swallowing and playing with one of the elbows of his sweater he nods his head to the side. "Your shoes are in the bathroom."

"Oh, I..." Harry looks up at him and opens and closes his mouth for a second, not really knowing what to say. They both just stare at each other for a little while, time seemingly going slower and faster both at the same time.

After a moment he releases the door from his sweaty grasp and shakes his head to clear his mind. "Right, shoes, okay."

He walks past Louis without making eye contact and into the bathroom to pick up his converse.

Memories of last night flood his mind the moment his foot lands on the tiles of the bathroom. For a moment he had completely forgotten about all of it, the event buried deep under the flurry of word-vomit and embarrassment in front of Louis, but the handmade bong and battered old lighter sitting on the edge of the bath are a perfect reminder of what the two of them got up to.

He wonders if Louis remembers. If it was weird for him to be in front of Harry now, because he knows what happened last night, and must have an undoubtedly better memory of it than Harry does.

Not that anything really  _happened_  as per se, but the time they spent together curled up in that very bathtub was definitely not a dream.

His shoes are perched on the edge of the counter next to the sink, the laces of the pair tied together somehow. How they got there is absolutely beside him, but they're there in one piece and he has them back so Harry's not complaining. 

He hovers for a moment, staring at himself in the mirror, not sure what to say when he has to face Louis once more. He doesn't want to mess up, doesn't want to embarrass himself.

He takes a deep breath before walking back into the room.

Louis is still standing where he left him, staring at the door as if Harry's still there. He frowns and hesitates for a moment before walking to stand beside him.

"I, uh... Thanks, Louis, for this." He lifts his shoes up briefly, gesturing towards them with his head, and Louis turns to face him with raised eyebrows.

"For what?" He frowns and cocks his head to the side, visibly confused.

Harry frowns again and looks to the side for a second, then back to him.

"For... um. For giving me my shoes back?"

"Oh." Louis eyes his shoes with a blank expression. "Yeah, sure, uh. Any time."

Time passes by as the two of them just stare at each other. He swallows uncomfortably, as if by instinct, and Louis' eyes dart straight to watch the bob of his throat, which is certainly not helping his awkwardness right now. He's not sure if it's inappropriate to ask. Not sure if it will make Louis mad or if it's crossing the line or, whatever, but he has to ask. He has to know.

"Louis are you... Okay?"

Louis rolls his eyes and looks up from where he had been staring at the zip on Harry's jacket, huffing a huge sigh. "I'm fine, Harry. You don't have to pretend act concerned, it's okay."

Harry frowns and opens his mouth, retracting his head back slightly like he's just been offended. He sort of has, really.

"I'm not pretending, Louis. You don't just walk in on someone staring off into space completely incoherent and don't get worried about them."

Louis swallows. His face says worried, sad, uncomfortable, but his body is saying confident, assured, strong. He shifts his weight onto his left foot and cocks his hip out, crossing his arms a little bit tighter. "Look, I don't need your pity, or concern, or whatever, okay? You have your shoes back, now will you please just leave. It's nearly six in the morning and I'd like to get a few more minutes of sleep if that's okay with you. We can't all rise with the sun like a fucking teletubby, you know."

Harry just looks at him and swallows. Nodding once he tucks his shoes under his arm and makes his way toward the door. He pauses with his hand on the doorknob.

"Bye Louis." He spares one final glance at Louis, before yanking the door open and walking straight out.

As he makes his way back toward his room, he tries to pretend that he hadn't noticed the sorry expression plastered across Louis' face. He tries to convince himself that the boy's features were not twisted into a look of extreme guilt. He hadn't looked tiny, vulnerable, sad. No, Harry's mind is playing tricks on him.

He must just be seeing things.


	6. Conversations ensue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So it's… been over a year.. and,,… i'm updating? hi

“Niall! I swear to fucking christ!”

There’s a noncommittal groan from inside the room.

“Open the goddamn door Niall! I’m not even kidding anymore!” 

Nothing.

“Fucking hell Niall, It’s freezing out here! I am 63% sure that one of my nipples is about to freeze off.”

There’s a muffled, half-asleep shout that sounds something like “You have too many of those anyway” followed by a very loud clang and heavy footsteps before the door finally swings open.

All ruffled up on one side, Niall’s hair currently very strongly resembles a cockatoo, and the line of drool dripping from one corner of his mouth is edging closer and closer to dripping onto Harry’s foot. He scrunches his nose up with something too fond to be disgust.

“This better be pretty fucking important, lad.” Niall mumbles into the wood of the doorframe as Harry pushes past him and into the dark room.  
His newly-acquired shoes are soon discarded at the end of his bed as Harry paces what little of the floor is not covered in clothes.  
He can see just out the corner of his eye, Niall watching him, almost like he can’t decide whether or not he is dreaming, and if paying attention to any of this is even worth it. 

He finally shakes his head and runs his hands through his hair, attempting to smooth it down but failing.  
Harry stops mid stride and glares at Niall. 

“You look like an albino hedgehog.”

Niall blinks at him, a heavy shifting of his eyelids against glazed-over eyes.

“I’m going back to sleep.” 

“Oh no you’re not.”

Harry grabs him by the shoulders half way back to his bed and spins him around. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”

“Christ Hazza what’ve I done now?” Niall mumbles as he plops onto the edge of his bed, pulling one corner of the duvet into his lap.

“Louis.”

It’s all Harry can manage.

Niall raises an eyebrow at him.

“Erm. I haven’t done Louis. Not that I can remember, anyway. I don’t particularly swing that way but I mean if I’ve had a few drinks in me then I guess maybe I could see myself-”

“Niall!

“You didn’t have sex with Louis!”

Niall seems to consider this for a moment.

“Oh. Okay well I guess that’s... good? I mean, yeah. So... What then?”

“I... I just.”

Harry throws his hands up in frustration, pulling at his fringe and making the curls there straighten then spring back suddenly. Spinning around hopelessly he falls back onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling with his arms spread out to the side.

“I just don’t understand him, you know?” He whispers it, too uneasy to say it any louder. 

There’s no one quite like Louis, he thinks. No one quite as eccentric, flamboyant, giddy as he is. No one that can go from fiery hot to frost-bitten cold, with cerulean eyes that can go from being warm, serene oceans, to piercing icicles in the tick of a clock. He’s self-righteous, hyperactive, too loud and easily excitable, yet so empty. So quiet and so withdrawn. He’s everything Harry’s never understood, and maybe that’s why he finds him so enchanting.

“I don’t think anyone does, to be completely honest with you.” Niall scratches at the back of his neck as Harry jolts into a sitting position.

“But I mean... Just help me out here will you? How can he go from being so-” he gestures to one side with his hands “-to so-” then to the other “-in less than a minute? I don’t get it, Niall! Just tell me what the hell is going on with him?!”

His genuinely pained expression makes Harry’s heart sink to the pit of his stomach.

“I don’t really think it’s my position to talk about this with you, Haz, I’m sorry.”

A deep sigh pushes it’s way through Harry’s lips as his eyes roam the face of the boy in front of him, his eyes glinting with something like empathy, but making no move to elaborate on the topic.

“Is he ever going to let me in, Niall.”

The sound of a sigh fills the room.

“He likes you, Haz, I can tell. Just give him some time. That boy has a lot of walls built up, and... and it’ll just take some time.”

-

The entire first half of Harry’s lunch break is spent not-so-subtly staring at Louis from across the table.  
He’s waiting for something, anything out of the ordinary. Something abnormal that Harry can draw a line to, connect the dots with what happened this morning, what he accidentally witnessed.  
Despite how hard he stares, Louis doesn’t do anything differently. Which is probably worse than if he had, because maybe this means that occurrences like this are completely normal.

Louis looks up suddenly, a sharp little snap of his neck like all of his movements, quick and to the point, and then suddenly he’s looking at Harry.

His eyes are the piercing blue that they have always been, and Harry quietly admits to himself that it was stupid to assume that they wouldn’t have been.

He blinks at Harry for a second, one of his perfectly rounded eyebrows lifting up behind his fringe. He studies Harry’s face for a second, the slightest hint of a smirk playing on his lips, and Harry gets lost in the way his lips form around his words.

Words? Shit.

“Harry?”

He blinks out of his reverie. “Huh... What? Sorry?”

Louis bites back a laugh. “I said, can I help you with something?”

Harry knows what he’s meant to say. He knows he should just say no, sorry for staring and continue eating his goddamn turkey sandwich but the thing is, he’s just so freaking sick of this.

This constantly tiptoeing around Louis because he doesn’t understand him, he doesn’t want to say something wrong and upset him, make him hate Harry more than he probably already does. 

Before his mind can catch up with his body he’s standing up.  
“Can I speak to you for a moment?”

Louis looks at the others, but Zayn is busy fiddling with his phone and Liam and Niall seem to be in a deep conversation about supras. 

“Something that you can’t say right here?” Louis pulls a face. Harry can’t decipher what it means.

“Just... please? It won’t take a second.”

Louis looks around again, glances out the window.

“It’s 5 degrees outside.”

Harry doesn’t respond and Louis looks at him, waiting for an answer that doesn’t come, so he just shrugs and pushes his way past Harry, making his way outside.

“I don’t mind if you don’t.”

-

As soon as they’re outside the cold hits Harry like a tonne of freezing cold bricks, he spins on his heel to look at Louis, suggest they go inside somewhere, but he’s already taking off in the opposite direction.

“What, Louis, wait I-”

“Follow me.”

So he does.

Louis trudges through the snow away from the building, further and deeper into what remains of the woods in the bitter temperature.

Harry follows helplessly behind and, he just can’t help but think. Think that this exactly the kind of thing that he doesn’t understand about Louis. He’s so confusing, so mysterious, everything that Harry normally hates in another boy, so why is it so utterly endearing in Louis.

“Where the hell are we going?” 

Louis doesn’t stop walking, just spins around to face Harry and steps backwards for a bit, a little smile creeps across his face and, this is good, this is progress, at least he doesn’t look like he wants to stab Harry for bringing him out here.

“You’ll see.” It’s said with a wink, and soon Louis is turning around and picking up the pace, he starts running through the snow and shouts over his shoulder “Come on slow poke!”

So Harry runs.

Trees fly past him, a blur of brown and white, the only sounds his heavy panting and the thud of Louis’ feet through the sludge. He feels free. It’s just such a liberating moment for some reason, he can’t stop smiling and when a giggle escapes the mouth of the boy in front of him and flies past Harry, getting lost behind them as they run further and further into the woods, he thinks Louis feels free too.

He halts suddenly and Harry crashes into his back, sending the pair of them tumbling down into the snow in a pile of limbs, arms bare where they should be covered in coats, necks touching the snow instead of warm scarves but it’s nice, it’s refreshing after the high-speed journey here, and Harry thinks he would care a whole lot more if he were with someone other than Louis.

He sits up and shakes out his curls, the snow already starting to seep through his trousers. Louis is already looking at him and he pauses, hands halfway to his head. “Hi.”

Louis raises an eyebrow at him. “So is this where you kill me?”

The sound of Harry’s laugh reverberates through the space around them. Or at least tries too, and He shakes his head with a smile.

“Well, for the record, you are the one that brought us out here, I would have been quite content with going to, I dunno, my dorm or something.”

He cocks his head to the side, considering. “You have a point, Styles.”

Louis rises from the ground and pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, placing one between his teeth and lighting it like it’ his lifeline, not the complete opposite.

Harry watches as he paces around for a bit before collapsing down onto a log that has been pulled to one side of the little clearing that they have fallen into, and Harry finally gets a chance to properly look around.

There’s a couple of smaller logs and a chair that looks suspiciously like the ones from their dorm rooms, there’s even an ash tray on one of them and a little hessian bag wedged under one of the logs.

“Do you come here often, then?”

Louis blinks at him for a second, deciding. Smoke curls through his lips before he blows it out properly, narrowing his eyes. “I can’t decide if that was a really corny pick up line or if you were genuinely asking me that question.”

Harry laughs a bit at that, pulling himself up from the ground before his trousers get completely soaked.

“No, I was actually asking you.”

Louis nods then, taking another pull from his cigarette.  
“Zayn and I discovered this place half way through first year, we sort of just come here whenever we need to get away for a moment.”

“And the ash tray was a necessity?”

“What do you expect me to do, flick the butts onto the ground? This isn’t a fucking third world country Harold.”  
Once again Harry’s laugh tries to echo around them, but this time it’s cut short by his own hands clapping over his mouth.

Eventually he tucks his hands back into his pockets in a sad attempt to keep them warm. It really is freezing out here, and he briefly considers asking Louis for a cigarette. There’s no way he would be able to smoke it without embarrassing himself, though, no way he would look as effortless as Louis, exhaling the little clouds of smoke like a champion. It’s probably not a good thing, that he’s had that much practice.

“You know, Louis...

Harry starts up after a little bit, testing the waters

“I’ve never met someone quite like you before.”

Louis shrugs. “What can I say, I’m one in a million. Or, one in six billion, should I say, otherwise there would be millions of others like me wouldn’t there.”

Harry just nods, digs his feet into the snow. He’s not sure if that’s a good thing. It’s so very typical for Louis to change a statement that big into a joke. So common for him to just brush it off, never actually accepting any compliments. Harry wonders if he ever believes them.

“So why did you bring me here, then.”

Harry’s taken a little off guard at that. His feet pause and he feels his hands tighten around the log he’s been grasping and lets the silence go on for too long. Why did he even bring Louis out here?

“I just...”

“You just.” Louis prompts

“I don’t understand you.” There it is, there’s no going back now. “I know we’ve practically only just met but I feel like I know nothing about you. I mean yeah, we get along, but I already know so much about the other boys and like... I don’t know... I don’t want to make you uncomfortable so please tell me not to pry if you’d like but I just... I want to know you, Louis.”

He stubs out his cigarette and immediately lights up another one.

He doesn’t make eye contact with Harry, just watches the smoke slowly curling through the air and sways his head from side to side.

“Well, Harold-”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Harrison?”

“No,”

“Hershel, then.”

“What? No, I-”

“Harriet?” 

“My name is Harold, but, please don’t call me that.”

Louis kind of looks at him for a second, waiting for an explanation.

“My dad calls me that, is all. He’s kind of a dick.”

“Oh.” Louis looks away. “I’m sorry, then.

“Well, Harry, to be fair, I don’t really know you either.”

This isn’t exactly what Harry was hoping for. The cheeky tone of Louis voice is nice, but not the direction he was trying to steer the conversation towards.

And then Louis is smirking at him with a sly wink of his eye and Harry remembers how fucking irresistible this boy can be and fuck it. Harry will take what he’s given.

“Okay.” He manages to croak out through his clammy throat, “What would you like to know?”

Louis seems to consider this, leaning back against a tree and crossing his legs, nibbling on his cigarette thoughtfully.

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything. Tell me all of it, the whole shebang.” 

Louis all splayed out, so sure of himself.

“Okay, uh...” Harry shifts his eyes, wondering how to start this. “I was born in Cheshire in 96, I have a sister called Gemma and a cat called-”

“Oh fuck off, you know that’s not what I mean.”

Harry stops, his eyebrows raised. Louis’ cigarette burns slowly in his hand, already half finished.

“I mean, tell me the weird shit, the stuff that really matters. I wanna know what songs you listen to when you’re pissed off, how you got that scar on your elbow, fuckin’... I wanna know about the best meal you ever ate, what hairstyle you had when you were, like, eleven or whatever. Don’t tell me that mundane boring shit that nobody really cares about but everybody pretends to care about when they first meet someone, you’re so much more interesting than that, Harry, I can tell.

“And don’t even try to tell me that you’re not and that you live a boring little life in Holmes Chapel because that fuckin’ sucks, Harry. Everyone’s life is interesting but not everyone realises it, not straight away, anyway. Hell, it sure as fuck took me long enough to realise it about my own life but oh boy am I glad that I did.”

Louis’ blinking at him, his breath hot on his cheeks and Harry hadn’t even realised that Louis had stood and was now barely centimeters away from his face until his gaze was dropping down to Louis’ lips.

Those thin, rose petal lips. Harry knows he’s staring, but Louis is too.

Not for the first time, he desperately wants to inch forward, close the gap and connect their lips. But he can’t, not only because he’s not allowed but because it doesn’t fit the moment. 

He settles for staring. And breathing.

“... I had a mullet when I was eleven.”

Louis blinks.

“Get out. You’re not fucking serious.”

Harry raises his eyebrows, and finally, his eyes. Louis looks incredulous.

“Legit. It was an accident, though. One of those moments where you know the hair dresser has fucked up but you’re too polite to complain about it. Had to rock that thing for at least a month before it grew out enough to cut it evenly again.”

Not even a second passes before Louis’ laugh is bursting through his lips and smacking Harry in the face. He steps back and leans forward animatedly, clutching his stomach.

Harry can’t help the grin that breaks across his face.

“Oh my god Harry I-”

Really this boy should be awarded for still managing to look perfect while cackling like a damn hyena. How he’s even managing to talk right now is beside Harry.

“Can’t even believe that you- holy shit I just- that is amazing.” 

He makes his way back over to the log, clutching his side and catching his breath, a giggle still overcoming him every now and then. “Please tell me you have photos of this.”

“Absolutely not!” Harry remarks with raised eyebrows. “I destroyed them all as soon as I knew how, there’s no way in hell I’m letting this get back to me.”

“Noooo!” Louis pouts. “After you got me all excited. Not even a picture to feed my soul.”

“Nope.” Harry sits down on the log next to him, closer than before but not too close that they are touching. “Not a single one, sorry.” A moment passes as Louis calms down and Harry works himself up. The silence is loaded.

“Why are you here, Harry?” Suddenly Louis’ voice is so much more serious, more meaningful.  
“Well I wanted to talk to you, I-”

“No, I mean. Why did you get sent to Parrish?” and oh.

Harry hasn’t really spoken about this with anyone, not properly anyway. Sure, Niall knows why he’s here and he briefly spoke to the other lads about his arrival at the school but he’s never really gone into any explicit detail about any of it. He doesn’t really know what to say.

“My parents are getting a divorce.” He can hear himself talking, the air is too quiet around them. “My sister is off to college, Mum and Dad are moving away from each other, and I was just kind of stuck in the middle I guess.”

“Couldn’t you live with one of them?”

“They didn’t want to make me choose...”

“Oh.” 

“Yeah.”

The heat of the boy next to him warms Harry’s side as he rests his head on his shoulder, tangible, grounding and everything Harry needs right now.

He’s not really bitter about the divorce, not anymore, but it still hurts to think about, especially here, miles away from everything he’s grown to call home.

“I would have run away, if I were you.” Louis’ voice is barely a whisper, Harry’s certain he wouldn’t have heard it if the boy’s mouth wasn’t only a fraction away from his ear.

“Run away?”

His nod shakes Harry’s shoulder slightly.

“Oh, green eyes, I’d run away with you.”

Harry rests his own head atop Louis’ then, so quietly intimate.

“Where would we go?”

Something in the air changes then, like realisation has dawned on the boy beneath him. It’s almost as if he feels different in that moment, and Harry swears he feels his shoulders droop ever so slightly.

“I... We... would have nowhere to go.”

Harry hums deep in his throat, considering.

“Maybe you just weren’t fast enough.”

“Maybe.”

Louis sits up then, the warmth gone from Harry’s neck, and tucks his hands into the sleeves of his jumper.

“Is that... why they sent you here?” The question is heavy, pushing a little, Harry can tell. “Because you were trying to run away from something?”

Louis sighs quietly, curling his legs up onto the log in front of him, closing in on himself.

“Not exactly. I mean I’m... I’m technically kinda fucked up, I guess.”

What does he mean by that. Harry has no fucking idea what that’s meant to mean. He has a thousand and one questions, he wants him to elaborate, but he doesn’t say anything more than that.

“I just... Fuck, Harry, this is why I really hate meeting new people because it feels so stupid to explain this, like, it’s not even a big deal. I mean, please don’t take that the wrong way it’s not your fault by any means it just... feels so stupid to talk about.”

He glances at Harry, who refuses to look away, his chest is tight and his throat hurts, he wants so desperately to be comforting Louis.

“Basically, my life has kinda sucked at some points and I’m not exactly...

“There are some people who like to tell me that I have problems. That I need to do this and do that to be right again but... I dunno. I’m not going to bore you with what I mean by that.”

Harry wants to say: No  
He wants to say: That wouldn’t bore me at all, please tell me Louis, it’s obviously an important part of your life that I want to know about so I can understand you more  
He also wants to say: Nothing you ever tell me could seem boring or stupid, you’re so complex and detailed and I want to get to know all of your layers

He absolutely doesn’t want to say (but does say): “That’s okay. If you don’t want to talk about it, I mean. I understand. I think.”

He smiles at Harry, clearly appreciative that he’s not going to push him any further.

“Sending me here was one of the things that they thought would help me get better, to get me away from... some things. And I mean it has, a bit, so... That’s all that matters I guess.”

Louis does nothing for a second, just a sad little smile on his lips as his eyes trace patterns in the snow.

“We should get back, Harry. The others will start to worry soon."

He stands up and offers his hand out to Harry who, after a moments consideration takes it in his own.

"Lou?" He whispers after a few strides. His hand is squeezed ever so slightly tighter at the use of the nickname and Louis' pace falters a little bit.

"Haz?" 

"Thank you."

Louis glances behind him, still walking. "For what?"

Harry shrugs, even though Louis can't see him.

"For being you."


End file.
